JAKARTA - Pope Leo urged world leaders to end world hunger. In his speech before the United Nations (UN) agency, Pope Leo said allowing millions of people not to eat every day was "a failure of ethics".
During his visit to the head office of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, the Catholic Pope also condemned the use of hunger as a weapons of war, without mentioning certain conflicts or countries.
Leo cites UN data showing about 673 million people don't eat enough every day, calling the figure "a clear sign of rampant insensitivity, a spiritless economy and an unfair and unsustainable resource distribution system".
"In a time when science has extended life expectancy... letting millions of humans live - and die - beset by hunger is a collective failure, an ethical deviation, a historical violation," the Pope said.
Leo, the first US whale, spent most of his career before becoming a missionary in Peru. Leo made concern for the poor a focus on the beginning of his five-month term.
Pope Leo spoke in front of about 125 delegates attending the week-long forum that coincided with the 80th anniversary of FAO.
The Pope, speaking mainly in Spanish, said the current conflict "has witnessed the resurgence of food use as a weapons of war".
"International humanitarian law, without exception, prohibits attacks on civilians and essential items for the survival of the population," he said.
"This seems forgotten, because, it hurts, we are witnessing the continued use of this cruel strategy," the Pope said.
"We cannot continue like this, because hunger is not the destiny of mankind, but its destruction," he said.
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