Hunger for the desperate poor, many of them small children, is an agonizing experience, an unsatisfied craving that will lead to illness and, for many, to death. For these hundreds of millions of our brothers and sisters, each of whom is Jesus in his most distressing disguise, hunger takes cruel and destructive forms. It is the shriveled limbs and swollen bellies of starving children. Each day on this beautiful planet of ours over forty thousand children, age five years and under, die of malnutrition-related illnesses. That adds up to over fourteen million lives a year. We need to come to terms with the fact that these children are not killed by a disease for which science has found no cure. No, these children are the victims of moral and political failure to see that every person has the basic necessities of life. The poverty-induced hunger rampant in our world today is, to use the words of Pope Paul VI, “an insult flung in the very face of God.”

— Mary Evelyn Jegen, SND, How You Can Be a Peacemaker