Vatican City, Sep 20, 2004 / 22:00 pm
In an address to a meeting at the United Nations yesterday in New York, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, expressed the Vatican's support for an initiative proposed by the president of Brazil to fight hunger and poverty around the world.
After expressing "the personal adherence of Pope John Paul II to this important initiative," the cardinal noted the "vast humanitarian action of the many Catholic institutions in the world, especially in missions and in the poorest countries," saying that "the Holy See has always supported the many personal and collective initiatives that have been proposed to solve the drama" of hunger in the world.
The Cardinal mentioned the support of the Holy See for previous initiatives by U.N. bodies to alleviate poverty and hunger such as the 1996 Report of the World Food Summit and the 2000 U.N. Millennium Declaration, and, referring to a speech he made in 1996, outlined the principles that inspire Holy See action: human dignity, solidarity, the universal destination of the goods of the earth and the promotion of peace.
Notwithstanding a world alliance against hunger and poverty, he stated, "it was discovered bit by bit that there were not sufficient funds to finance a program of world food security."