CCHD head urges focus on solutions to poverty, not just its magnitude

Published: 2004-01-14

NEW ORLEANS (CNS) -- As they observe Poverty in America Awareness Month in January, Catholics and other people of good will need to focus not only on the magnitude of poverty in the United States but also on solutions to the problem, said the head of the U.S. bishops' Catholic Campaign for Human Development at a New Orleans press conference. Speaking Jan. 12 at Cafe Reconcile in New Orleans, Father Robert Vitillo, CCHD executive director, launched the organization's fourth annual national campaign to raise public awareness about the challenges faced by poor and low-income people in the United States. "I doubt that many of us here would have comfortably enjoyed a Thanksgiving dinner if we knew that our own relatives were hovering outside our door with no food to eat," Father Vitillo said. "Yet we do, in fact, tolerate this very injustice when we quietly ignore the plight of some 34.6 million of our sisters and brothers in the human family who are burdened each day by poverty in this, the richest of nations. "When it comes to children, the news is even more disturbing; 16.7 percent of children in the U.S. live in poverty," he added. "That amounts to 12.1 million children -- or one out of every six children -- and one out of every five children under 5 years of age."

Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .