May 26, 2008 / 11:46 am
A “coherent response” is necessary to address the “overwhelming challenge” of the food crisis caused by a surge in global food prices. The remedy is a new mentality that would “place the human person at the center and not focus simply on economic profit,” Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi said to the Human Rights Council on Thursday.
Archbishop Tomasi, head of the Holy See’s permanent observer mission to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, said that the public must realize that chronic hunger can cause violent conflict, uncontrolled migrations, environmental problems, epidemics, and even terrorism.
The archbishop said that intergovernmental agencies “rightfully have concluded that hunger is not due to lack of food.” Rather, he said, hunger is caused by the lack of both physical and financial access to agricultural resources.
The food crisis should direct everyone’s attention to the 854 million people plagued by chronic hunger, whose ranks are joined by four million new people each year, the archbishop said.