Is it time for the Church to come to the fore in the fight against global hunger?

Last July, the Catholic Church under Pope Leo XIV released an important document titled Seeds of Hope: The Church at the Service of Food Security. Good Practices. The introduction of this document has a quote from Pope Francis' Bull of Indiction of the Ordinary Jubilee of the Year 2025;

"Hunger is a scandal, an open wound on the body of humanity, and it summons all of us to a serious examination of conscience".

This powerful quote invaded my reflection of the gains and missed opportunities as we celebrated World Food Day this week. As someone who has worked in the food security field through out the SDG period, my pride would be seeing good progress on SDG#2 and #12. Unfortunately, tracking data from around the globe are not very encouraging. Not a single country appears on track to achieve the targets set for SDG 2. Thinking about missed opportunity, the religious organizations who have huge influence of populations and access to enormous resources came to mind. 

To me, it is not enough for Churches to focus on interventions curerntly being executed by their organizations but should come out bold and drive forward the global food security agenda. The churches right from local parishes and chaplaincies need to become direct actors in the agrifood system before it is too late. Human population continues to grow exponentially with highest growth rates in the low income and conflict affected areas where the church has strong following. With projections pointing to an increase of 60% in food production to meet food needs by 2050, there is an uphill task ahead. Current level of efforts won't make much difference. In my view, it is time for the pro-life Catholic Church to lead the walking of the talk by actively scaling up the Good Practices initiative into a global program, beyond the current scope of its organizations such as Caritas and CRS. More localised action is needed in the last mile. The document published (here attached) is a great step in the right direction. What do you think? Is your parish or chaplaincy doing anything concrete to improve access to adequate and nutritious foods in the local communities? Share your views.