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Shrinking economy leads to growing hunger

07 Feb 2010 - Preaching the News for Sunday

The gospel this Sunday describes the abundance of fish caught by the disciples, whose “nets were tearing” from the weight. Many a hungry American would gladly accept a meal made from that catch, according to a report released Tuesday. The numbers receiving emergency food from the largest hunger-relief charity and its partners rose 46 percent from 2005 to 2009. Feeding America, which conducted the survey, said 37 million people, including 14 million children, need emergency food aid--more than 10 percent of the U.S. population. That compares to 25.3 million people in 2005, when the group released its last quadrennial study. It based the new figure on 61,000 interviews and 37,000 surveys of local charitable agencies. “The findings of this study are nothing short of tragic,” said Feeding America chief executive Vicki Escarra. “We have to find a way to feed people in the land of plenty.” The United States is the world’s top corn and soybeans exporter as well as a major beef exporter. Feeding America reported last September that unemployment has played a major role in the rising demand for emergency food. “This is a real challenge for America,” said Dennis Smith, director of the Northern Illinois Food Bank. “Hunger has become almost epidemic in this country.” The study also found that black and Hispanic Americans have been disproportionately affected by hunger. Although each group makes up around 15 percent of the U.S. population, the report found that black Americans account for 34 percent of people seeking food and Hispanics 21 percent. President Barack Obama has set a target of ending child hunger by 2015. Last year he backed a $1 billion annual increase in school lunch and other child nutrition programs. Source: An article by Nick Carey for Reuters

Hunger feeding america vicki escarra hispanic americans child hunger dennis smith northern illinois food bank african americans united states recession food aid
Starvation looms in drought-stricken Africa

31 Jul 2011 - Preaching the News for Sunday

“The hand of the Lord feeds us,” the psalmist proclaims this Sunday. The United Nations is urging “massive” action to feed millions in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa region. An estimated 3.7 million people in Somalia--about a third of the population--are on the brink of starvation. Millions more in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda have been struck by the worst drought in the region in 60 years. The U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) began an airlift of food aid on Tuesday into the Somali capital, Mogadishu, as well as into eastern Ethiopia and northern Kenya on the border with Somalia. Josette Sheeran, executive director of WFP, said that a deadly combination of natural disaster and regional conflict had created this emergency, resulting in soaring levels of malnutrition. This Sunday’s gospel relates how with limited food supplies Jesus miraculously fed the multitudes. It will take a worldwide effort of near miraculous proportions to avert a famine that would be “the scandal of this century,” warned French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire Monday. Apart from massive food deliveries, he called for action to bring down high food prices on international markets. Counterterrorist concerns have also complicated and slowed the response. In recent years the United States has cut humanitarian aid to Somalia on the grounds that that al-Shabaab, the militant Islamist group that controls much of the south, will divert assistance to its own profit. Al-Shabaab denies that Somalia is suffering from a famine and continues to prohibit UNICEF and WFP from operating in the country. Despite earlier promises of access, it now declares that only the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies may remain. As a result, said Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Ibrahim, "More than 3.5 million Somalis, the vast majority of them in the insurgent-held areas, may starve to death." Sources: Articles by Sabina Castelfranco for Voice of America Newsand Stewart M. Patrick for the Council on Foreign Relations

drought josette sheeran world food program food aid bruno le maire somalia horn of africa starvation
When I was hungry?

26 Jun 2016 - Preaching the News for the Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C

The psalmist offers a blessing for the counsel of the Lord, confident that “You will show me the path to life.” Meanwhile, in the second reading, we are reminded of the supreme law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and warned that, “if you go on biting and devouring one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another.” Finally, Jesus makes it clear in this Sunday’s gospel that he is not interested in retribution—and that neither should his followers be. Yet, based on the priority given to arms sales compared to food aid around the world, Pope Francis warned we have our priorities all wrong. Pope Francis told workers and diplomats Monday at the U.N. agency that delivers food to crisis areas it is "a strange paradox" that food often cannot get through to those suffering due to war but weapons can. Francis' visit to the World Food Program (WFP) was the first by a pope to the Rome-based agency that provides emergency food aid for 80 million people in some 80 countries in the world. The pope has repeatedly drawn attention to global indifference toward refugees, the poor, and the hungry, and has made food security one of the cornerstones of his papacy, previously visiting WFP's sister organization, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Francis said that while aid is often obstructed, weapons are trafficked freely. "As a result, wars are fed, not persons. In some cases hunger itself is used as a weapon of war," he said. "The death count multiplies because the number of people dying of hunger and thirst is added to that of battlefield casualties and the civilian victims of conflicts and attacks. We are fully aware of this, yet we allow our conscience to be anesthetized. We become desensitized." “It makes no difference where arms come from; they circulate with brazen and virtually absolute freedom in many parts of the world," Pope Francis told the WFP. “As a result, wars are fed, not persons." The arms trade was a special focus of the pontiff’s diagnosis. Weapons, he said, “have gained unprecedented importance,” sidelining other ways of resolving the "present instability of the world situation. . . . Whereas forms of aid and development projects are obstructed by . . . incomprehensible political decisions, skewed ideological visions, and impenetrable customs barriers, weaponry is not,” Francis said. Lessons drawn from the readings This Sunday’s second reading reminds us that “For freedom Christ set us free . . . For you were called for freedom, brothers and sisters.” People who lack something as basic as food are not free, and when some of us are not free, none of us is truly free, at least not in the Christian vision of one body. And if we take seriously the mandate to love our neighbor as ourselves, our task is clear. We must make food aid a higher priority than the weapons trade. Final thought in light of the news Pope Francis is calling our leaders to a radical reordering of priorities. “National security” has been the watchword used by governments worldwide to justify spending vast amounts buying, selling, and developing the latest in weaponry—machines designed, lest we forget, to kill and control. What would a world without weaponry look like? Probably a lot like a world without hunger. Your neighbor is hungry—how will you respond?

Hunger Pope Francis arms sales food aid weapons food security