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Pope to FAO: ‘Guaranteeing access to food is a basic human right’
In his message to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization for World Food Day 2026, Pope Leo XIV calls for food to be recognized as ‘a basic human right,’ insists that bread must never be used as ‘a weapon of war,’ and urges the international community to show the ‘moral audacity’ needed to combat hunger.
By Deborah Castellano Lubov
“Regular access to safe, adequate and sufficient food, in keeping with the dignity of every person, is a basic human right. Guaranteeing this right is an obligation of justice that binds both individual States and the international community.”
Pope Leo XIV offered this reminder in the message he sent to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the occasion of this year’s World Food Day, which takes place on October 16.
The Holy Father’s message was read on Friday at a commemoration event by Monsignor Fernando Chica Arellano, the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the FAO.
In the message addressed to FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu, the Pope recalled that the theme for this year’s Day is “Innovate Today. Nourish Tomorrow” and thanked the organization for their efforts internationally.
Intolerable that water be considered ‘a contested commodity’ and bread ‘a privilege’
Pope Leo stressed that despite technological advancement being greater than ever before, “it is intolerable that bread should be considered a privilege and water a contested commodity.”
In his letter, the Holy Father argued “that hunger cannot be considered a statistical anomaly, as it is caused mainly by a lack of political will and collective charity,” and criticized the notion that food shortages are geographically unavoidable.
He observed that while innovations accelerate production, distribution is being neglected.
“Grain markets,” he lamented, “are being optimized on stock exchanges, while the actual seeds that germinate in the soil fall into the hands of monopolies that suffocate small-scale farming.”
Bread should not be an instrument of geopolitical pressure or war
The Holy Father explained that ensuring tomorrow’s nutritional needs are met “requires freeing food production from a purely speculative mentality.”
“Bread,” the Pope stressed, “should be neither an instrument of geopolitical pressure nor a volatile financial asset. Nor must it ever be used as a weapon of war.”
“Indeed,” he continued, “it is a terrible offense against human dignity to prevent bread from reaching any person or to destroy the means by which it is produced.”
He said that bread is precious because it sustains the life that God has given us and that, therefore, we must overcome the temptation of short-term thinking.
Reaching a breaking point
The Holy Father went on to observe that “the myth that growth can be endless when resources are limited” has reached a “breaking point.”
Today, the Pope suggested, innovation requires adopting an intergenerational sense of responsibility that looks beyond annual budgets.
Innovation, he continued, “means reconciling technology with wisdom, including ancestral wisdom, while maintaining a vision for the future.”
“It is not a matter of rejecting technological advances,” Pope Leo said, “but rather of integrating them with the wisdom of farmers who have deepened their understanding of the soil and the climate through centuries of conscientious observation.”
He said this also involves protecting water as an inalienable common good.
Encouraging the FAO to continue contributing to the universal common good
In the text, the Pope encouraged the Food and Agriculture Organization and its member States “not to settle for abstract analyses or declarations of limited effectiveness.”
“Now is the time for moral audacity,” he said, stressing that “a new global food order is essential — one in which technological innovation is unconditionally subordinated to respect for God-given human dignity and the universal common good.”
Furthermore, the Pope said there is “an urgent ethical imperative to redirect resources invested in the war industry towards sustainable agricultural research and the regeneration of degraded soils.”
Courage to resist unethical innovation
Tomorrow, the Holy Father said, is “not an abstract span of time that awaits us passively”; rather, he insisted, “it is the harvest of what we sow today through our decisions.”
“If we sow unethical innovation based on a desire to dominate the earth and exclude the weak,” he said, “we will reap barrenness and strife.”
“If, on the other hand,” he observed, “innovation stems from respect for the natural order and justice for the hungry, tomorrow will bring a table spread wide for the nourishment of humanity.”
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