EIGHTH GENERAL CONGREGATION

VATICAN CITY, 15 OCT 2010 (VIS) - The Eighth General Congregation of the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops was held this morning in the Synod Hall in the presence of the Holy Father and of 168 Synod Fathers. The president delegate on duty was Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.

  Extracts from some of the Synod Father's speeches are given below:

SEVENTH GENERAL CONGREGATION

VATICAN CITY, 14 OCT 2010 (VIS) - The Seventh General Congregation of the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops was held this afternoon in the Vatican's Synod Hall in the presence of the Holy Father. The president delegate on duty was His Beatitude Ignace Youssif III Younan, Patriarch of Antioch of the Syrians, Lebanon.

  Extracts from some of the Synod Father's speeches are given below:

HOLY FATHER'S MESSAGE TO FAO FOR WORLD FOOD DAY

VATICAN CITY, 15 OCT 2010 (VIS) - The Holy Father has sent a Message to Jacques Diouf, director general of the United Nation's Rome-based Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) for the occasion of World Food Day.

  "The theme of this year's World Food Day, 'United against Hunger'", writes the Pope in his English-language Message, "is a timely reminder that everyone needs to make a commitment to give the agricultural sector its proper importance. Everyone - from individuals to the organisations of civil society, States and international institutions - needs to give priority to one of the most urgent goals for the human family: freedom from hunger. In order to achieve freedom from hunger it is necessary to ensure not only that enough food is available, but also that everyone has daily access to it: this means promoting whatever resources and infrastructures are necessary in order to sustain production and distribution on a scale sufficient to guarantee fully the right to food".

  "If the international community is to be truly 'united' against hunger, then poverty must be overcome through authentic human development, based on the idea of the person as a unity of body, soul and spirit. Today, though, there is a tendency to limit the vision of development to one that satisfies the material needs of the person, especially through access to technology; yet authentic development is not simply a function of what a person 'has', it must also embrace higher values of fraternity, solidarity and the common good".

  "In this context, FAO has the essential task of examining the issue of world hunger at the institutional level and proposing particular initiatives that involve its member States in responding to the growing demand for food. Indeed, the nations of the world are called to give and to receive in proportion to their effective needs, by reason of that 'pressing moral need for renewed solidarity, especially in relationships between developing countries and those that are highly industrialised'".
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AUDIENCES

VATICAN CITY, 15 OCT 2010 (VIS) - The Holy Father today received in audience Muhammad al-Sammak, political adviser to the Grand Mufti of Lebanon, a representative of Sunni Islam; and Ayatollah Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Ahmadabadi, professor at the Faculty of Law at the Shahid Beheshti University of Tehran and member of the Iranian Academy of Sciences, a representative of Shia Islam.
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OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS

VATICAN CITY, 15 OCT 2010 (VIS) - The Holy Father appointed Archbishop Jose Serofia Palma of Palo, Philippines, as metropolitan archbishop of Cebu (area 5,088, population 4,016,000, Catholics 3,624,000, priests 760, religious 1,373), Philippines. He succeeds Cardinal Ricardo J. Vidal, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.
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