Pope Says Leaders Are Feeding Wars Instead of the Hungry

Pope Leo on Monday criticized world leaders for prioritizing war over the fight against hunger, telling the United Nations food aid agency that global priorities were badly skewed.

“Conflicts are ‘fed’ more readily than people are nourished”, the first US pope said during a visit to the Rome headquarters of the World Food Programme (WFP).

The pope urged governments to increase spending to combat hunger and not to subject food aid to limits based on geopolitical concerns. He did not name any specific leaders.

Leo said the world’s humanitarian crises were increasingly being pushed into a “secondary place among international priorities”. He said access to food was “a fundamental human right grounded in the dignity of every person”.

The WFP is the largest provider of food aid worldwide. According to the agency, it provided 15.6 billion daily rations to 121 million people in 2025, funded by $6.5 billion in private donations.

Leo said food security was an essential part of global stability and helped address the underlying causes of geopolitical instability.

(Reuters, bak)