VATICAN CITY (CNS): More funding is needed in the global fight against hunger and poverty, the Vatican’s secretary of state told world leaders at the United Nations.
Cardinal Angelo Sodano told the gathering that there is a “lack of sufficient funds for a worldwide food security program to make headway”.
He spoke on September 20 at a gathering of government leaders who met to discuss ways to eradicate hunger and poverty in the world.
Cardinal Sodano reminded nations of their funding commitments made in September 2000 when all 191 UN member states pledged to cut by half the number of people suffering from hunger and living on less than $1 a day.
In a separate ceremony the same day he made his address at the United Nations, Cardinal Sodano was presented with the 2004 Path to Peace Award, awarded annually by the Path to Peace Foundation, an agency headed by the Vatican’s nuncio to the United Nations.
Vatican nuncio to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, said Cardinal Sodano was being honoured as a way of “recognising the important contribution that papal diplomacy has made to the international community”.
Also honoured with the foundation’s Servitor Pacis Award was Archbishop Michael Courtney, the former papal nuncio to Burundi who was killed in an ambush on December 29 near the capital, Bujumbura.
