Pope Benedict XVI on Monday will make the keynote speech at the World Summit on Food Security at the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).Afterwards he will greet one by one the heads of state attending the summit's inauguration, the Vatican confirmed on Friday.
This will be the first time that the pope will visit FAO headquarters - where his predecessor John Paul II attended three events in 1979, 1992 and 1996 - although he has always sent a message to major FAO events.
A Vatican spokesman said the pope will arrive at FAO by car and is expected to remain there for just over an hour.
He will only greet heads of state and not government, not even Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, the spokesman added.
The reason for this, the spokesman explained, was because "there have been many requests and there is too little time".
Libya's Muammar Gaddafi is expected to be among the heads of state attending the FAO summit. FAO Director General Jacques Diouf, a Muslim from Senegal, has been to the Vatican on several occasions, most recently when he was invited to take part in last month's synod of African bishops.
FOOD SECURITY INVOLVES GOVERNMENT AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR
FAO said it had organised the World Food Security Summit "to give a new momentum to the fight against hunger and malnutrition affecting 1.02 billion people".
The UN organization explained that its aim was "not only to ensure sufficient food production to feed a world population that will grow by 50 percent and reach 9 billion by 2050, but also to find ways to guarantee that everyone has access to the food they need for an active and healthy life".
This will entail placing "a more coherent and effective system of governance of food security at both national and international levels," FAO added.
FAO said it also wanted to "make sure developing countries have a fair chance of competing in world commodity markets and that agricultural support policies do not unfairly distort international trade".
The summit will also seek to "mobilize substantial additional public and private sector investments in agriculture and rural infrastructure and ensure farmers' access to modern inputs to boost food production and productivity in the developing world, particularly in low-income and food-deficit countries".
FAO said it will call on business leaders "to help find hunger solutions" because "with privatization, globalization and the transformation of the food chain from the farm to the table, the importance of the private sector has increased".
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