By M.K. George
Rome, October 3, 2026: A quotation widely attributed to the political thinker Hannah Arendt says: “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.”
You do not have to look far to see that her warning still rings true.
Walk down almost any busy street. A poor woman with a child, a sick man, an elderly person, or someone struggling with mental illness reaches out for help. We pass by. Sometimes we throw a coin or two into an outstretched hand and continue walking. We may have helped financially, but was there a touch of empathy?
The problem has a universal dimension.
The United Nations’ latest food-security estimates say that about 645 million people experienced hunger in 2025, equivalent to 7.8 per cent of the world’s population.
Children are particularly vulnerable.
In 2024, an estimated 150.2 million children under five were stunted because of chronic undernutrition and related factors. Another 42.8 million experienced wasting, including 12.2 million suffering from severe wasting.
And yet UNEP estimated that 1.05 billion tonnes of food were wasted in 2022 at the household, food-service and retail levels — approximately 2.9 million tonnes every day.
Not because every kilogram of wasted food could simply be transported to a hungry child somewhere else. The problem is much more complicated than that. But because food waste, hunger and poverty exist side by side in a world with enormous resources.
We have enough to waste. We do not always have enough compassion to share.
The loss of empathy becomes even more painful when we look at children caught in war.
UNICEF reported that, between 7 October 2023 and 3 February 2026, at least 21,289 children had been reported killed in Gaza, with 44,500 children reported injured.
On 28 February 2026, a school in Minab, Iran, was struck during the US-Iran conflict. Amnesty International reported that 156 people were killed, including 120 children.
Whatever our political loyalties, whatever our views about war, one principle should remain beyond argument: children should not become expendable. When the suffering of children becomes merely another statistic in a political argument, something inside us has already begun to die.
Empathy dies, barbarism grows.
All is not lost
But all is not lost. There are people who refuse to walk past suffering.
In Kottayam, Kerala, P. U. Thomas, founder of Navajeevan Trust, has devoted himself to helping people in desperate circumstances. The trust says it provides free meals to around 5,000 poor patients and their bystanders every day at government hospitals in Kottayam.
There are countless similar examples around the world. Families quietly support the education of children who are not their own. Individuals raise money for patients who cannot afford treatment. Volunteers distribute food.
Doctors and nurses work where medical care is scarce. Organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières send medical teams into conflict zones, disasters and neglected areas.
Much of this work receives little publicity. Perhaps that is one of its most beautiful qualities.
We need more empathy
It is remarkable how much more each of us can do.
We can waste less food. We can consume less when we already have enough. We can support someone else’s education. We can contribute to a patient’s medical treatment. We can feed someone who is hungry. We can stop for a moment when a person reaches out to us on the street. And sometimes, we can simply listen.
Pope Leo XIV’s Dilexi Te, his 2025 apostolic exhortation on love for the poor, speaks powerfully about this responsibility.
He writes of the need to recognize Christ in the poor and suffering and describes assistance to those lacking life’s necessities as a means of “contact, encounter and empathy with those less fortunate.”
Across religions, philosophies, literature and the lives of ordinary people, we encounter the same basic moral intuition: another person’s suffering should matter to us.
Empathy begins when we stop seeing the hungry person as a statistic, the refugee as a problem, the sick person as an inconvenience, or the poor person as someone beneath us.
The power of empathy is not that it makes us feel another person’s pain, but that it moves us to do something about it, and that is indeed compassion.
Indian Jesuit Father George Mutholil, based in Rome, serves as the Society of Jesus’ General Counsellor and Regional Assistant for South Asia. He advises on matters specific to this region while also supporting the Superior General on broader issues of governance.