Pope Leo XIV will visit the Rome headquarters of the United Nations World Food Programme on Monday, June 22, the Holy See Press Office announced, an early sign that the new pontiff intends to place the Church’s longstanding concern for the hungry near the center of his pontificate.

According to a statement from the Prefecture of the Papal Household, the Pope accepted the invitation of the World Food Programme’s executive director and will meet participants in the agency’s annual Executive Board session, along with staff members and their families. The visit follows his prayer intention earlier this year, which asked Catholics to pray and work so that everyone might have food.

The World Food Programme, headquartered in Rome alongside other major UN food and agriculture bodies, is the world’s largest humanitarian organization confronting hunger and food insecurity. Its outlook for the year estimates that hundreds of millions of people will face food crises, a toll worsened by armed conflict.

A papal visit underscores a conviction that runs through Catholic social teaching: that feeding the hungry is not optional charity but a demand of justice. Developed in encyclicals such as Populorum Progressio and Caritas in Veritate, the Church’s teaching on the universal destination of goods holds that the world’s resources are meant for all, and that wealthier nations bear a genuine obligation toward those who lack the means to live in dignity.

For Pope Leo XIV, the visit offers an early opportunity to address an institution whose mission intersects directly with that teaching — and to press the case that a world capable of producing enough food for all cannot treat hunger as inevitable.