As Catholics, we must come together with a common conviction that we can no longer tolerate the moral scandal of poverty in our land and so much hunger and deprivation in our world. As believers, we can debate how best to overcome these realities, but we must be united in our determination to do so. Our faith teaches us that poor people are not issues or problems but sisters and brothers in God's one human family (A Place at the Table, USCCB).

Right now in Arizona 824,000 people live in poverty, 29% of them are children under the age of five. In American 37 million people live below the poverty line, and 854 million people across the world are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. In the time it takes you to read this paragraph 3 children in our world will die from a preventable plague - hunger.