Hungry to hit 1 billion mark

Pontiff appeals for Africa as world’s hungry increase.

An internally displaced girl, who fled a military offensive in Pakistan’s Swat Valley region, looks through a tear in the food distribution tent while awaiting for her food ration at a U.N. camp about 87 miles northwest of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. Photo: CNS

By John Thavis

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – In a letter to the president of Germany, Pope Benedict XVI expressed his concern at the plight of struggling African countries during the current global economic crisis.
The Pope’s letter was released as new statistics showed that a record 1 billion people – about one in every six – were suffering from chronic hunger in the wake of the economic crisis. The rate is much higher in Africa, where about one in four people suffers from chronic hunger.
The Pope’s May 4 letter to German President Horst Kohler, published in the Vatican newspaper June 20, said Africa’s future depends on an attitude of sharing and fairness that resists the “law of the strongest” and the pursuit of selfish interests.
“In this context the support of the international community is needed, notwithstanding – and in fact precisely because of – the current financial and economic crisis that is particularly affecting Africa and the poorest countries,” the Pope said.
The Pope was responding to a letter from Kohler that preceded the German pontiff’s March visit to the African countries of Cameroon and Angola.
The Pope said he returned from Africa convinced that it was a “young continent, full of the joy of life and of trust, with an enormous potential for creativity.”
“Certainly, the foreign interests and the tensions of Africa’s own history still weigh on its present and threaten its future,” he said.
The Pope pledged the church’s continued assistance to the weakest sectors of Africa’s population, including those suffering from violence and illnesses like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
The new report on hunger came from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. It said the world economic crisis has lowered incomes and increased unemployment, reducing access to food by the poor.
The FAO report said there were 100 million more chronically hungry people today than one year ago. The organization defines hunger as the consumption of fewer than 1,800 calories per day.