Pope Francis received members of the Asociación Agraria de Jóvenes Agricultores [Agrarian Association of Young Farmers] on May 13.
“If you think about it, the vocation to which God has called you makes you witnesses to an integral ecology that the world needs today,” the Pope said. God “asks you to think of the countryside as a gift, as something that has been given to you and that you will bequeath to your children; to think of production as a gift that the Lord, through you, and through your work, sends to his people to satiate their hunger and quench their thirst.”
The Pope told the farmers that “it is necessary to work so that this immense good that God gives us is not transformed into a weapon —for example, by restricting the arrival of food to populations in conflict —or into a mechanism of speculation, manipulating the price and marketing of products for the sole purpose of obtaining a greater benefit.”