“The world today could live without hunger,” but “conflicts are ‘fed’ more easily than people are nourished,” Pope Leo XIV said when he visited the United Nations World Food Program, the world’s largest humanitarian organization, on June 22.

Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Senator John McCain and a former executive director of W.F.P., welcomed the pope at the annual meeting of the executive board of the organization at its headquarters in Rome.

She hailed his presence as “a great honor” and said that “for hundreds of millions of people around the world who go to bed hungry each night, your voice is one of the—if not the—most powerful on earth…. You have spoken for them with courage and with love…. Your call for peace has never been more urgent. Hunger and conflict are deeply intertwined; where wars rage, families starve.”

In his speech, Pope Leo noted that “today, crises have evolved from isolated events into persistent realities, marked by prolonged conflicts, chronic food insecurity, economic volatility and growing climate vulnerabilities.”

He attributed this situation to the fact that “the international order has become increasingly fragmented, arising in part from the crisis of the multilateral system” and “the institutions established to safeguard the concept of a common future for all peoples and a global common good appear to have been weakened.”

He emphasized that “in the absence of a shared ethical horizon capable of sustaining genuine cooperation, the international system has shifted from multilateralism toward a ‘disorderly and conflict-ridden multipolarism with a prevailing sense of mistrust.’” 

“Consequently,” he said, “states have increasingly allocated their resources toward national security, economic growth and domestic stability, disregarding the close link between these issues and multilateral cooperation.”

He appealed to the governments and peoples of the world “to increase the resources dedicated to combating hunger and its root causes, and to remove the obstacles that prevent aid from reaching those in need.” 

At the same time, he said, “such support should also strengthen engagement with the church and civil society” because “reinforcing the capacities of all these actors together will multiply our collective effectiveness in the fight against hunger.”

Pope Leo noted that W.F.P. is “dedicated to saving lives in emergency situations and providing food assistance amid conflicts and natural disasters.” The organization provided humanitarian assistance to 121 million people in 2025, according to its website, and is the global leader in providing school meals.

The pope said the W.F.P.’s commitment “resonates profoundly with the Catholic Church’s mission to uphold human dignity and to foster fraternity, rooted in the Gospel’s call to love our neighbor,” and “together, we share the urgent task of confronting hunger and malnutrition, while also tackling the underlying structural causes that sustain them.”

To do this task effectively, Pope Leo said, “we must examine the challenges before us, their underlying causes and the paths toward lasting solutions.” The pope said that the interlocking challenges of conflict, climate change, economic volatility and hunger raise “a fundamental question: What configuration of the global order is capable of producing, reproducing and, at times, normalizing such conditions?”

He emphasized the importance of understanding “why the system constantly produces the very problems it is then forced to correct.”

He drew attention to what he called “a striking paradox,” the fact that “unprecedented global productive capacity exists alongside expanding zones of extreme vulnerability. The same forces that drive economic growth often exacerbate exclusion and marginalization.”

Indeed, he said, “although alleviating human suffering is widely recognized as essential in principle, humanitarian concerns increasingly risk being relegated to a secondary place among international priorities.” We see this, he said, in “the progressive bureaucratization of solidarity alongside the quiet commodification of human life. On one hand, humanitarian action is increasingly burdened by bureaucratic procedures that can delay assistance to those in need. On the other hand, access to essential goods, including food, is too often influenced by economic or strategic considerations. As a result, those who do not generate quantifiable value risk becoming invisible.”

All this “creates a serious ethical challenge,” he said: “The human person is no longer consistently placed at the center of international action.” He recalled that Pope Francis highlighted this reality when he addressed the W.F.P.’s executive board in 2016, when he noted that “whereas forms of aid and development projects are obstructed by involved and incomprehensible political decisions, skewed ideological visions and impenetrable customs barriers, weaponry is not.”

Pope Leo remarked, “in effect, conflicts are ‘fed’ more readily than people are nourished,” and this reality “reflects not only operational shortcomings but also a fundamental imbalance in political and moral priorities.”

As a result of this, he said, “hunger erodes social cohesion, heightens the risk of conflict and fuels forced migration. Moreover, it undermines the capacity of states and societies to build resilient institutions, provide effective education and foster sustainable economic development.”

In this light, he said, humanitarian action “reflects the global community’s responsibility to strengthen solidarity, resist exclusion and recognize the inherent God-given dignity of every person.” In this sense, he said, “the World Food Programme is more than a political, economic or technical actor; it is a concrete expression of international solidarity. Indeed, where national institutions recede and community networks disintegrate, its presence helps to prevent humanitarian crises from deteriorating into irreversible collapse.”

For this reason, Pope Leo said, “a renewed commitment to multilateral cooperation is essential.” Like Pope Francis, he emphasized that “in an increasingly fragmented and multipolar world, no single state can address global challenges alone.” He said, “Lasting peace and integral, sustainable human development are possible only through the participation of all, fostered by genuine international dialogue and cooperation oriented toward the common good.” 

He told the W.F.P. leadership that “in situations where governments lack effective territorial control or humanitarian access is restricted, trusted local partners become indispensable” and said “the Catholic Church—through parishes, dioceses, Caritas agencies, and other faith-based initiatives—often reaches vulnerable populations in areas inaccessible to international actors.” He encouraged W.F.P. and its partners “to continue supporting these efforts.”

Pope Leo also insisted that such basic commodities as “food, water and health care cannot be subordinated to market considerations or geopolitical interests.” Indeed, he said, “food security is an essential component of global and integral security. 

He commended the W.F.P., which works in 120 countries and territories, for extending its work beyond immediate relief to long-term initiatives, such as programs that provide meals to schoolchildren. It is in fact the world’s leading provider of school meals and provided meals to 19.3 million schoolchildren in 63 countries in 2025.

“These investments strengthen education, human development and social resilience, reflecting an integral vision of human development that promotes dignity, opportunity and the well-being of the whole person,” Pope Leo said.

His international audience applauded when he finished. Ms. McCain and Carl Skau, the acting executive director of the W.F.P., thanked him for his speech and recalled how W.F.P. workers are seeking to bring food to Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, Lebanon, as well as to some of the forgotten places of the world. They noted that W.F.P. workers are currently detained in Yemen, while many others put their lives at risk carrying out their humanitarian mission. When he entered the building, Pope Leo prayed and laid a wreath of flowers in front of a memorial to those who had died in this noble service. He also spoke off the cuff on a number of occasions, expressing his own passionate commitment to alleviating world hunger and ending wars that increase hunger and cause deaths.

Gerard O’Connell is America’s senior Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History. He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.