Scottish Catholic Observer

Archbishop Bernardito Auza (above), Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN, yesterday told the General Assembly that the Vatican was very encouraged by recent global poverty forecasts, ‘which indicate that the number of people living in extreme poverty is expected to fall for the first time below 10 percent of the global population before the end of 2015.’

“These figures are all the more encouraging, if we consider that tangible progress has been noted in almost all regions of the developing world,” the archbishop said. “Yet the number of people still living in extreme poverty continues to be unacceptably high. The more than 700 million extremely poor remind us of the magnitude of the challenge still ahead, if we are to eliminate extreme poverty by 2030.”

The first goal the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the archbishop said, is poverty eradication, but the developmental paradigm needed to help them must hinge, as Pope Francis said in his UN address, on the fact that ‘we are dealing with real men and women who live, struggle and suffer, and are often forced to live in great poverty, deprived of all rights.’

— The World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty  is on Saturday, October 17

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