Pope Leo XIV stood in the square before the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompeii, his voice carrying across the ancient stone. He prayed that God might “enlighten world leaders” and calm the “fratricidal hatred” currently wounding the earth. As he spoke, the ripples of distant conflict were already being felt at the dinner tables of the poor.

In central Thailand, fertilizer shops have been out of urea for weeks. The ongoing war involving Iran has choked the shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf, trapping 30 percent of the world’s supply. According to The Washington Post, farmers are being forced to reduce their planting just as the rice season begins, threatening the food supply for millions across Asia.

Read together, these events describe a world where the violence of the powerful always falls hardest on the humble. The Pope’s spiritual plea finds its physical echo in the parched fields and empty grain sacks of the Thai countryside. This paper’s reading of the current crisis is that we have prioritized the machinery of war over the stewardship of the soil that feeds us; the causal link between a missile in the Gulf and a hungry child in Bangkok is undeniable.

“The Rosary points our hearts to the needs of the world,” the Pope said during his Mass. Those needs are now desperate. Without the humble inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus, the labor of the farmer is in vain. We must heed the call for peace not just for the sake of the soul, but for the sake of the bread that sustains our families.