Editor’s Note: I am not going to comment on Pope Francis at this time. My feelings about him have been seen throughout this publication. With respect for the deceased, I will not comment until a sufficient amount of time has passed. Here’s the release by Francesca Merlo from Vatican News…
At his last public appearance, Pope Francis repeated what had become a slogan in his pontificate of peace. Everyone knew to expect it at the end of his audiences, but never did it lose its strength.
During the Easter Urbi et Orbi blessing, the day before he died, the Pope’s words echoed the countless appeals he had made over the years, urging world leaders to lay down arms and turn to dialogue.
Even as he struggled to speak, having asked someone to read his message on his behalf, his voice, albeit weak, resonated across St Peter’s Square and screens across the world.
From the first days of his 12-year-long pontificate, Pope Francis spearheaded the global Catholic movement for peace advocacy. Through words, actions, and deeds, he demonstrated his unshakable belief in the power of reconciliation, the importance of dialogue, and the urgency of ending violence in all its forms.
Words and actions
Dubbed “the Pope of the peripheries,” Pope Francis always took the time to remember those suffering from conflict. While praying for peace in areas that gain most of the media attention, he also never failed to channel his prayers to some of the areas most hard-hit, yet most forgotten by the world.
One of his most symbolic gestures, and a particularly striking moment of his pontificate, was in April 2019, when he knelt to kiss the feet of South Sudanese leaders at the head of a country grappling with a horrific civil war. As he greeted President Salva Kiir and his rival Riek Machar in the Vatican, the Pope, in his humility, kissed their feet, urging the leaders to lay down their weapons and pursue paths of peace.
His personal plea turned diplomatic when, four years later, in February 2023, he traveled to South Sudan. Along with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, he warmly addressed thousands of faithful who had suffered and continued to endure the brutal consequences of war.
Then, as he addressed the nation’s authorities, civil society and diplomatic corps at the Presidential Palace in Juba, he warned them: “Future generations will either venerate your names or cancel their memory, based on what you now do”.
His cry for peace also looked to the legacy of wars past, the scars inflicted by the violent atrocities committed between nations and peoples, and ensuring that certain mistakes are never repeated. During his visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in November 2019, Pope Francis delivered a powerful plea against nuclear weapons.
Standing at the Atomic Bomb Hypocentre Park in Nagasaki, on the same ground where atomic bombs had caused unprecedented destruction, he condemned the devastation caused by such arms and all who possess them, declaring, “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.”
Pope Francis consistently sought to address the roots of destruction, urging those in positions of power to take responsibility. His advocacy for denuclearization was essential in this.
So often, Pope Francis denounced the arms trade, repeatedly condemning those who profit from war. Addressing the United States Congress on 24 September 2015, he posed a haunting question: “Why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society? Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood.”
He described the investment of money in weapons as ‘madness’ and decried the debt linked to the “black market” of arms. As the world entered 2025, his message remained as urgent as ever: “Stop colonizing people with weapons!”
Pilgrimages of peace
Just as South Sudan was, many more of Pope Francis’ apostolic journeys were dedicated to peace. In March 2021, he made history as the first pope to travel to Iraq. There, he brought a message of unity and hope to a nation devastated by years of conflict.
In particular, his meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf underscored the power of interreligious dialogue and mutual respect, and led to Pope Francis’ statement that “Peace does not demand winners or losers, but brothers and sisters who, despite misunderstandings and past wounds, choose the path of dialogue.”
Most recently, in September 2024, Pope Francis visited East Timor, a young nation that fought long and hard for independence. His presence was a fierce sign of closeness to the most Catholic nation in the world, which struggled so long for freedom and is still healing from its past.
There, as he celebrated Mass at Tasitolu for 600,000 people, the Pope reminded those present that “You remained firm in hope even amid affliction, and, thanks to the character of your people and your faith, you have turned sorrow into joy”.
Diplomatic appeals and ceasefire calls
Beyond his travels, Pope Francis has used his voice to intervene in global conflicts, appealing tirelessly for ceasefires and negotiations. In May 2014, Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met with him in the Vatican for a prayer summit, demonstrating his belief that prayer and dialogue could pave the way for peace.
Since then, as violence continued to escalate in the Middle East, in October 2024, Pope Francis made an impassioned plea for a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Israeli hostages and humanitarian access to those in need across the region.
In that same month, after one year of Israeli offensive in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Palestinian Minister for Foreign Affairs Nasser Al-Kidwa presented Pope Francis with their peace proposal for the war devastating their nations.
The unwavering voice of a peacemaker
The Pope’s closeness to those who suffer and his advocacy for an end to global violence were always a priority. Even in moments of personal difficulty, Pope Francis remained committed to peace.
In his final weeks, throughout his hospitalization for bilateral pneumonia, Pope Francis took the time to video chat with the Holy Family parish in Gaza, with whom he has been in close contact throughout the entirety of the Israeli offensive.
In this Holy Year dedicated to Hope, Pope Francis’ messages, closeness, and care for peace are a legacy that will continue to resonate throughout the future of the Church and humanity, remembering that his was not just a cry for an absence of war, but for the presence of justice, dialogue, and fraternity – for a world that is for everyone and not just for some, and in which those who have more never, ever forget those who have less.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
