“The biggest disease today – and we could say that always – is not leprosy or tuberculosis – we could include covid-19 and many others – but rather feeling unloved, not cared for and abandoned by everyone.” This phrase of Mother Teresa of Calcutta takes on an important validity during these times in which care is a crucial issue placed at the center for the future of humanity, due to the effects of the humanitarian crisis, the pandemic, the feeling of tranquility that the vaccine brings or the concern of those who have not been able to access it.

The value of care, or the other side of the coin which is carelessness, occurs in three inseparable dimensions that go from the personal (taking care of ourselves), family and community (taking care of others), to the global (caring for the planet).

A sector where neglect is evident in the three areas that we mentioned before is food. Along with health and extremely linked to it, it is where inequality and exclusion are evident on our planet. The following numbers in Latin America speak for themselves: 187 million people live with food insecurity (FAO-PAHO-UNICEF), 50 million suffer from hunger (FAO-UN) and 5 million from malnutrition (FAO-CAF). On the other hand, 57%, of the adult population are overweight and 19% are obese. Furthermore, 50% of fruits and vegetables are lost or wasted, 60% of the soils are degraded, and 70% of the water is extracted for agriculture (not necessarily to feed our peoples, as can be seen).

The pandemic has helped us to pay more attention and to be sensitive to the word “care”, and it would be great if our most common verb was “to care”, but we still have a long way to go. We need to take care of ourselves much more and much better, both physically, mentally, and spiritually, and at the same time to take care of others, to take care of the relationship with others, both those we love and those we do not so much, as well as to attend in a special way to those most in need and those who are the most fragile in society (children and older adults). On the other hand, we are within a great system where a part cannot be treated without affecting the whole; for this reason, the care of our common home is also essential.

Responding to these challenges requires a concert of public and private initiatives on a global, national and regional scale, but each of us can begin with small gestures of care. If we think about it and if we are careful with the details of our job, with the treatment of the things and instruments that we use daily, with gestures of esteem to those around us, avoiding being wasteful with food and taking care of the environment, we can begin to make a difference.

There is a primary personal context: our “square inch” of positive impact where we can be free and take small steps. And if we look carefully around us, there are many more of us who want to take the first steps towards what Pope Francis calls a “culture of care” in his Laudato Si encyclical.