In an audience with Italy’s Food Bank Foundation, which is marking 25 years of operations, Pope Francis recalls the need to respond to the "scandal" of hunger and the "sin" of injustice of wealth and waste beside destitution. Look the poor "in the eye, shake hands with them, see in them the flesh of Christ." The memory of the "founders", the entrepreneur Danilo Fossati and Don Luigi Giussani.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - The Food Bank Foundation - which is celebrating 25 years of existence - is a "network of charity”, that aims to  "counter the waste of food, retrieve and distribute it to families in need and to the poor people." It is a response to the "scandal of hunger" to enhance and "share what we have with those who do not have the means to  fulfill this primary need".

These are some of the points made by Pope Francis in his audience granted today to tens of thousands of members of the Food Bank, an organization of about 2 thousand volunteers who retrieve excess food and food packages from hotels, supermarkets, factories, to redistribute them  to poor families, the new poor, or migrants. The Food Bank helps about 2 million people each year and supports at least 8,669 charitable organizations.

Encouraging volunteers, Pope Francis said: "Hunger today has assumed the dimensions of a" scandal "that threatens the lives and dignity of so many people - men, women, children and the elderly -. Every day we have to deal with this injustice, indeed I will say more: this sin. In a world full of food resources, thanks to the enormous technological advances we have made, too many people do not have the basic means to survive; and this not only in poor countries, but increasingly also in rich and developed societies. The situation is exacerbated by the increase in migration flows, which have brought to Europe, thousands of refugees who have fled their countries and are in need of everything. "

The Pope twice stressed that we need to "educate humanity, to recognize the humanity in each person, in need of everything" and called on volunteers, when meeting the needy, not to forget "that they are people and not numbers, each with their own burden of pain that sometimes seems impossible to bear. Bearing this in mind, you will always remember to look them in the eyes, shake their hands, see in them the flesh of Christ and also help them to regain their dignity and to get back on their feet".

He cited, as an example of this attention to the person of the poor, the two "founders": "Perhaps this was exactly what Danilo Fossati was thinking, this food business entrepreneur and founder of the Food Bank, when he confided to Don Giussani his discomfort at seeing the destruction of still edible products seeing how many in Italy were starving. Giussani was impressed and said, "I rarely ever met a powerful person who chose to give without asking for anything in return, and I had never met a man who gave without wanting to make it known. ... The Food Bank was his work. Never publicly, always on tiptoe, he followed it from its birth'".

"It is Jesus himself who invites us to make room in our hearts for the urgent need to "feed the hungry ", and the Church has made it one of the corporal works of mercy."

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