Pope Francis seemed to take a jab at the United States and President Donald Trump on Monday, while speaking at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Rome headquarters for World Food Day.
The pope called on the global community to work together to solve the related issues of hunger, climate change, and the refugee crisis.
“We see consequences of climate change every day,” he said. “Thanks to scientific knowledge, we know how we have to confront the problem and the international community has also worked out the legal methods, such as the Paris Accord, which sadly, some have abandoned,” he added, with an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s commitment to withdrawing from the 2015 agreement.
“We are called to propose a change in lifestyle and the use of resources,” he said. “We can’t be satisfied by saying ‘someone else will do it.'”
Pope Francis condemned “negligence toward the delicate equilibriums of the ecosystems, the presumption of manipulating and controlling the limited resources of the planet, and the greed for profit.”
“The yoke of poverty caused by the often tragic movement of migrants can be removed by prevention,” he declared, “consisting of development projects that create jobs and offer the capacity to respond to climactic and environmental changes.”
He specifically emphasized that ending armed conflicts and limiting the effects of climate change are “prerequisites” for addressing global hunger. His comments align with a U.N. report published last month that found worldwide hunger, fueled by conflict and climate change, is on the rise for the first time in more than a decade.
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