Pope Leo XIV on Thursday slammed the world's failure to stop millions of people going hungry, blaming a "soulless economy" and calling on people to rethink their lifestyles and priorities.

"Allowing millions of human beings to live -- and die -- victims of hunger is a collective failure, an ethical aberration, a historical sin", Leo said in a speech at the Rome-based UN agricultural agency.

"The scourge of hunger... continues to atrociously plague a significant portion of humanity," he said, a day after the UN warned global hunger "is at record levels".

The crisis was "a clear sign of a prevailing insensitivity, a soulless economy," Leo told the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) at an event to mark its 80th anniversary.

Leo highlighted the "outrageous paradoxes" by which enormou

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