Cardinal Martino, the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, has previously been seen as little short of Monsanto's man in the Vatican. He has been perceived as working hand in glove with the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See to try and achieve a papal blessing for GMOs as a key tool in the fight against hunger.

In a stunning reversal, Cardinal Martino is apparently now saying that famine and lack of nutrition are to be blamed on the poor distribution of plentiful foodstuffs. He stated that the responsibility for the food crisis "is in the hands of unscrupulous people who focus only on profit and certainly not on the well-being of all people."

Martino said that a more just system of distribution, and not the manufacturing of genetically modified foods, would be the key to addressing the problem.000