Photo: Pope Francis
“With the food that is thrown away we could feed all the people in the world who suffer from hunger,” Pope Francis says in a video released this week.
The pope’s message was filmed Dec. 5 during his meeting with leaders of Argentina’s Excluded Workers Movement, which released the clip at a gathering of people who eke out a living recycling trash in the South American nation, Vatican Radio said.
In the video, dedicated to the recyclers of the world, the Argentine pontiff urges them to continue developing “decent kinds of work stemming from their ecological tasks” and to raise awareness among the people “about wasting food.”
“Think about how to do more with this work of recycling leftovers. Because leftovers are good. Nowadays we can’t allow ourselves to despise what is left over,” former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio says.
“We are living in a throwaway culture, where we easily toss away not only things, but people,” the pope says, adding that “the food that is thrown away could feed all the hungry people of the world.”
Francis say that recycling “is not only ecologically sound and productive,” but “it also means not wasting food when there are young people going hungry.
The pope has always been very aware of the “cartoneros,” as the trash-combing recyclers are known in Argentina, and during the inaugural Mass of his pontificate on March 19, he wanted to see one of their representatives sitting in the front row wearing his blue uniform.
Watch the video in Spanish below.
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