World must come together to address poverty, Morris says

James Morris, former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, speaks at St. Joan of Arc Church on June 5.

By Mary Ann Wyand

Some 850 million people in the world—half of them children—are hungry every day.

A sixth of the world’s population is hungry, malnourished and lives in poverty.

Every day, 25,000 people—including 18,000 children—die of malnutrition throughout the world.

Those sobering and heartbreaking statistics can be eliminated, James Morris explained, if more people, Churches, community organizations and companies support poverty-relief efforts in the U.S. and abroad.

Morris, an Indianapolis resident who served as executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme from 2002-07, shared compelling stories about his international humanitarian ministry during a Monarch Speaker Series presentation on June 5 sponsored by St. Joan of Arc Parish and School at the Indianapolis North Deanery church.

He discussed “Connecting to Children: The Importance and Responsibility of Living in a Global Community and How Nutrition Impacts Kids.”

In April 2002, Morris was named the 10th executive director of the world’s largest food aid organization. During 2005, the World Food Programme fed 97 million people in 82 countries with $2.8 billion in contributions.

Reflecting on visits to impoverished countries, Morris said relief organizations and their supporters are slowly making progress in alleviating hunger.

“But the fact of the matter is—in this rich world, this smart world, this technologically able world—there is no excuse for those numbers,” he said. “To think that 25,000 human beings die every day of malnutrition—75 percent of them children—and more people are dying of hunger, of malnutrition, than die of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV combined, it’s shameful, it’s sinful, it’s reprehensible, it’s unacceptable.”

Morris said he finds hope in the many good people and ministries that help the poor with basic human needs in the U.S. and Third World countries.

“I’ve grown to love this remarkable church and wonderful school,” he said about St. Joan of Arc Parish. “In the most generous Christ-like way for the last five years, [students, parishioners and staff members] made a special effort to generate resources so that the school each year fed 50 children around the world. Probably these kids were in Africa, and because of the generosity of students here the lives of those children will never be the same—all for the better—and now they have a chance.

“If every congregation in the world and every school did what this place has done,” he said, “we would be a lot further along in solving the problem [of world hunger].”

Morris and his wife, Jackie, lived in Rome during his

five-year leadership of the U.N. World Food Programme.

It was hard to leave the ministry, he said, but they are happy to be home again. Their daughter, Jennifer Schaefer, is an assistant principal and resource center coordinator at St. Joan of Arc School.

Now Morris serves as a consultant for the Indiana Pacers and helps Riley Hospital for Children, Gleaner’s Food Bank and the Boy Scouts, all in Indianapolis, as well as assisting Indiana University in Bloomington.

In his former ministry, Morris said, he focused on understanding and addressing the dimensions and magnitude of the critical problems of world hunger and extreme poverty in every country.

“It’s hard to identify with the magnitude and the seriousness of hunger, malnutrition and famine in the world,” he said. “I remember coming back to Rome after having made a trip through an area in Africa [and wondering] ‘Why, why, why are so many people living in such extreme poverty and such terrible sadness when other people live such good lives?’ ”

When he posed the question to a monsignor in Rome, Morris said, the priest told him that poverty is “a great mystery of faith” and God calls people to help the poor who struggle to survive each day.

The Catholic Church has “a wonderful relationship” with the World Food Programme, Morris explained, and “has supported us financially” for years.

“If there is a unifying principle of all the great faiths of the world,” he said, “it’s the responsibility of those who have to take care of those who have not. We know the scriptural references—‘I was hungry and you fed me.’ … All the great religious doctrines are replete with the absolute mandate that we have to do something about this.”

Feeding impoverished children enables them to do well in school, Morris said, and education is a critical factor in breaking the cycle of poverty.

“The World Bank would tell you that the most powerful investment any country can make … is to be sure that children are born to healthy mothers, nursed by healthy mothers, and well-fed, well-nourished, during the first 24 to 36 months of life,” Morris said. “And if that happens, the child has a chance. But if that doesn’t happen, it’s unlikely that the child will ever catch up, no matter what the remedial action might be.”

In the U.S., he said, the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Nutrition Program and food stamps are wonderful investments in the health of Americans.

“I became consumed and overwhelmed with this notion of hunger and poverty among children,” Morris said, and he spent “a huge amount of time” in southern Africa studying the impact of HIV/AIDS on women and children.

In southern Africa, women now have 60 percent of the HIV infections, he said. In Zimbabwe, a country of 13 million people, 1.3 million children are orphaned by HIV/AIDS, more than 20 percent of the population is HIV-positive, the life expectancy has dropped from 68 to 35 in one generation, and grandparents or older children are caring for younger children.

“It’s overwhelming,” Morris said. “The impact [of AIDS] on children is beyond comprehension. Fifteen million children in southern Africa are orphaned—their parents are gone—because of HIV and that number will go up a million more for the next five years. … The rest of the world has to step in and be helpful.”

During meetings with Pope Benedict XVI and the late Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, Morris said, he thanked the pontiffs for the role of Catholic missionaries around the world—sisters, brothers, priests and laypeople—who do extraordinary work in impoverished countries.

“The Catholic Church has been a remarkable partner for the World Food Programme, in part through Catholic Relief Services and Caritas,” Morris said, “but also through lots of diocesan missionaries all over the world.” †