Pope's May prayer intention: 'That everyone might have food'
Pope Leo XIV announced his May prayer intention urging Catholics worldwide to pray for universal access to food. He highlighted the paradox of widespread hunger alongside significant food waste, calling for gratitude, simple consumption, and sharing. The Pope urged a shift from selfish consumption to solidarity, encouraging actions such as awareness campaigns, food banks, and responsible lifestyles. He cited the World Food Programme's 2026 outlook, noting 318 million people face food crises and a potential additional 45 million due to the Middle East conflict. The prayer concluded with a plea that no one be excluded from the common table and that the Spirit fosters a view of bread as communion.
about 23 hours ago
Pope Leo XIV has announced his May “Pray with the Pope” intention, urging Catholics worldwide to pray that “everyone might have food.” In the video message he links the prayer to a call for concrete solidarity actions—such as food‑bank support, awareness campaigns and a simpler, responsible lifestyle—to confront the stark reality that hundreds of millions still suffer hunger while vast quantities of food are wasted. 1 2 3
The Pope’s prayer asks God to awaken a new awareness: to thank every morsel, consume simply, share joyfully, and view bread as a sign of communion rather than mere consumption. 1 3
He explicitly calls for a shift from “the logic of selfish consumption” toward a “culture of solidarity.” 2
Father Cristóbal Fones, director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, stresses that the intention reflects the Pope’s personal concern and urges believers to move from prayer to decisive action—first in prayer, then through tangible gestures such as establishing food banks and promoting responsible lifestyles. 1 2
The video was released on April 30 2026 via the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network and also posted on X (formerly Twitter). The full prayer text is available on the network’s website and its digital platforms, allowing the faithful to join the monthly “Pray with the Pope” initiative. 3
Assess Catholic teachings on food justice and stewardship
Catholic teaching treats food justice and stewardship as inseparable parts of the Church’s moral vision: God gives the earth and its fruits for human life, and humans must use them in a way that respects dignity, the common good, and the integrity of creation—not exploitation, waste, or “throwaway” indifference.
Catholic stewardship begins with the biblical claim that the world is God’s gift. In Genesis, God creates the earth, declares it “very good,” and gives humans plants “for food.” This grounds food as neither a mere consumer good nor a reward for domination, but a divinely intended means for sustaining life.
Genesis also links human life to “dominion” over creatures (fish, birds, cattle, etc.). Catholic tradition reads “dominion” not as permission for arbitrary control, but as responsibility: humans are placed over creation as stewards of a gift. The later jubilee legislation intensifies this stewardship logic by reminding Israel that land is not permanently owned by humans—“the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.”
A further stewardship dimension appears in the sabbatical rhythm of Leviticus: the land must rest (“a sabbath of complete rest for the land”), and people may eat what the land yields without exhausting it. The moral point is that the goods of creation are not to be treated as unlimited.
Catholic teaching does not reduce “food justice” to interpersonal kindness; it highlights structural injustice that produces hunger and malnutrition. Pope Francis describes the “throwaway culture” as something that affects those who are excluded—rapidly turning resources into rubbish and neglecting the human persons who suffer.
He then makes a direct connection between food waste and injustice: “whenever food is thrown out it is as if it were ‘stolen from the table of the poor.’”
Similarly, Fratelli Tutti condemns indifference toward waste—including “the waste of food.”
On the scale of global economics, the teaching emphasizes that hunger is not simply about insufficient production. Pope Francis’s message for the G20 states that there is enough food to feed everyone, because the problem is unequal distribution and the scandal of food that is wasted.
It also identifies market dynamics as morally relevant: when “financial speculation manipulates the price of food,” “millions of people suffer and die from hunger,” while “tons of food are thrown away,” and Fratelli Tutti calls this a “genuine scandal.”
Stewardship in Catholic teaching is not only about “what we do with land,” but also about how human systems damage the environment that sustains life. Laudato Si describes the earth as increasingly resembling “an immense pile of filth,” linking waste production, pollution, and delayed action until after health is “irreversibly affected.”
It also critiques the throwaway model of production and consumption: the industrial cycle has “not yet” developed the capacity for a truly circular model that preserves resources for present and future generations, reuses, and recycles waste.
This is where food justice and stewardship converge most sharply: an unjust food system tends to produce both human exclusion and environmental degradation. Pope Francis ties these together through the theme of waste—of food, of resources, and even of persons deemed “not yet useful” or “no longer needed.”
Catholic food justice also includes attention to the people who grow and harvest food. The U.S. bishops’ teaching summary on major issues states that “food security for all” must be a first priority and that farmers and farm workers “deserve a just return for their labor, with safe and just working conditions and adequate housing.”
It further connects this to stewardship: “Careful stewardship of the earth… demands policies that support sustainable agriculture.”
Pope Francis similarly insists on the moral urgency of protecting land and rural communities. In his address to participants in the World Meeting of Popular Movements, he denounces “land and water grabbing” and “unsuitable pesticides” as evils that uproot people, framing the resulting separation as physical, existential, and spiritual.
He also makes an especially direct moral claim about agrarian reform: citing the Church’s social doctrine, he states that in some countries “agrarian reform is, besides a political necessity, a moral obligation.”
Catholic teaching treats food access as a matter that requires public moral responsibility. The U.S. bishops’ approach (in their materials on food crises and policy) stresses that access to food must be protected, and that because food differs from ordinary commodities, market regulation is morally relevant. For example, a U.S. bishops’ backgrounder calls for protecting the “basic needs” of vulnerable populations and small farmers by regulating commodity speculation, noting that “access to food is a basic human right.”
The bishops also explicitly defend nutrition programs as instruments of justice: in Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, they argue that programs like SNAP and WIC must be “strong and effective” because “no one should face hunger in a land of plenty.”
In letters to Congress, the bishops emphasize that food insecurity is rising and urge strengthening nutrition supports and ensuring funding levels (including WIC) so that families have access to “enough nutritious food to sustain a life with dignity,” together with “good stewardship of the land and natural resources.”
Putting these sources together, Catholic teaching evaluates food systems and environmental practices by several moral criteria:
Catholic teaching presents food justice and stewardship as one moral task: the earth’s fruits must sustain human life in dignity, while economic and environmental systems must be governed by responsibility rather than “throwaway” indifference. Scripture provides the foundational vision of God-given food and land entrusted to humans; magisterial teaching then applies it to modern realities—waste, inequality, pollution, exploitation of rural life, and even speculative manipulation of food prices.