Pope Leo urges world leaders to put hunger before war spending

Pope Leo XIV used a visit to the World Food Programme’s Rome headquarters to argue that global priorities are badly skewed, with conflict, security and domestic politics crowding out the fight against hunger. He pressed governments to commit more resources to food aid and treat access to adequate food as a basic human right, not a discretionary goal.

The pope’s appearance landed inside an agency that says hunger is rising on nearly every front. WFP said the event was livestreamed to more than 20,000 employees worldwide, and Leo laid a wreath at its memorial wall honoring 171 staff members who died in service. Cindy McCain, Acting Executive Director Carl Skau and WFP Executive Board President Carla Barroso Carneiro attended the ceremony in Rome.

The moral test behind Leo’s message is stark. WFP said 266 million people across 47 countries were acutely food insecure in 2025, and its 2026 Global Outlook warns that 318 million people face crisis levels of hunger or worse, more than double the 2019 figure. At the same time, WFP’s 2026 funding tracker showed about $3.068 billion in contributions as of June 8, a large sum but still far short of the scale of need implied by those numbers.

The United States remains the agency’s biggest donor, and Washington announced an $800 million direct contribution on June 17 that WFP said will help reach more than 38 million vulnerable people in at least 37 countries. That money matters, but it also exposes how dependent the global food system is on political choices made in a few capitals. Earlier Trump-era cuts had already more than halved planned U.S. funding, showing how quickly hunger relief can be squeezed when budgets tighten or priorities shift.

Leo did not name any government, but his criticism clearly reached leaders who keep financing wars while humanitarian appeals lag behind. The challenge is especially acute in places such as Lebanon, where WFP said it has reached 700,000 conflict-affected people with food and cash assistance since the early March escalation, even as more than one million people remain displaced.

McCain, who said in February that she planned to step down for health reasons after a mild stroke in October 2025, has been one of the agency’s most public voices on the emergency. Her presence, and Leo’s visit on the eve of WFP’s June 23-26 Executive Board session in Rome, framed the same warning from two directions: if governments can mobilize quickly for war, they can find the resources to prevent hunger from becoming the world’s permanent crisis.