Pope Francis has encouraged the work to eradicate world hunger carried out by Manos Unidas. It is a Spanish charity founded 65 years ago within the women’s branch of Spanish Catholic Action.
Manos Unidas – Catholic Committee for the Campaign Against World Hunger was founded in 1959 in response to an appeal made by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) denouncing the “hunger for bread, the hunger for culture and the hunger for God that a large part of humanity is suffering from.”
This is what Pope Francis recalled when he received a delegation from Manos Unidas at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, according to Vatican News .
The Catholic association has around 6,500 volunteers, more than 70,000 members and collaborators and nearly 160 people working there with the aim of eradicating hunger, poverty and their causes.
In 2023 , Manos Unidas allocated more than 40 million euros to various programs that benefited more than 1.2 million people in 55 different countries, especially in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America.
Despite this great work, Pope Francis said that “they barely cover 15% of hunger in the world. It is very hard, very hard.”
“Thinking of the work that you, with the sensitivity and strength of the feminine genius, carry out in the eradication of these evils that continue to afflict so many nations, I would like to refer to the figure of the Mother of God, whom we celebrate in her Immaculate Conception. Because the Virgin Mary is the Woman par excellence,” added the Pontiff.
“She is the fully realized model of our humanity, through whom, by the grace of God, we can all contribute to improving our world,” said Pope Francis.
Referring to Manos Unidas, she added that “thanks to their characteristics, intuition and reality as mothers, daughters and wives” they carry out their mission of “fighting against hunger, underdevelopment and lack of education” and working to “eradicate the structural causes that produce them.”