IT'S THE CHURCH v. POVERTY

VATICAN Council Fathers at their last working session in St. Peter's voted to set up a secretariat in Rome to wage war on world poverty.
The Secretariat for World Justice and Development, proposed in the Constitution on the Church in the Modem World, now awaits a final goahead from the Pope. If he sets it up, it will have four major tasks: EDUCATION: to make all Catholics realise the extent and urgency of the problems of world hunger and poverty, complicated by population increase; to point out the means of solving them, and to stress the need for social justice to achieve peace.
ACTION: to enlarge the Church's charitable efforts, helping agencies like Misereor and CAFOD and causing new ones to spring up over the world.
INFLUENCE: to stimulate Catholics to encourage their governments to send s.adequate aid to developing countries.
RESEARCH: To encourage high-level studies into the problems of development and the ways the Church can assist. The proposals stress that the need to provide for the two-thirds of the world who go hungry can no longer be regarded a matter of charity depending on the good will of a benevolent few. It is a matter of justice.
Some structure is necessary at the heart of the Church which can grasp the problems of developing countries; can help to get them out of the "begging bowl" class; can carry on top-level dialogue with non-Catholics and nonChristians; and with governmental and international agen
By Fr. ARTHUR McCORMACK, M.H.M., a Vatican Council expert and authority on world hunger and popu lation problems.
cies as well as with independent bodies.
A simple organisation is proposed, on the lines of the Cornmission for Christian Unity, which has already transformed the whole climate of opinion in the Church regarding ecumenism.
It would be headed by a Cardinal whose life's work personifies the Church's concern for the poorer countries, an experienced executive secretary and an associate secretary. They would be based in Rome.
Associated with them would be the best and most committed experts, in the Church in the field of world poverty, people like Barbara Ward and Mgr. Ligutti of the Food and Agriculture Organisation who would form a policy committee.
The secretariat would work in liaison with the Secretariat of State, Episcopal conferences and the Synod of Bishops.
It would not supplant the work of existing agencies and would not be a fund-raising agency or a co-ordinating body for fund raising groups.
Perhaps it would best be described as a war cabinet of the Church—to wage the war on want. And perhaps with its ecumenical orientation, it will make this war the main field in which Churches co-operate during the next half century.
During the Council, the Fathers showed great enthusiasm for the idea. In all, there were nearly 70 speeches on hunger and poverty—far more than on the controversial subjects which hit the headlines.
Some misgivings were expressed that it might become just another bureaucratic organisation incapable of acting on the grandeur of its vision. But if that were a danger, there is even more danger in letting great ideals be dissipated for want of an organisation to enact them.
When the Pope told the United Nations he intended to expand the Church's aid, he might well have meant he would welcome the Council's request to establish this secretariat.
• Pope Paul told 900 delegates of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Association last week: "We give you the moral support of the Catholic Church most willingly." They were in Rome for their 30th annual meeting.
Praising the FAO, he said "if the Church adds its moral weight ... it is because nothing that affecle human affairs is outside the Church".