VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI urged the international community to address the problems of poverty and malnutrition in Africa's Sahel region.

"The Sahel was seriously threatened again in recent months by a notable decrease in food resources and by famine caused by a lack of rain and the resulting increase in desertification," the pope told members of the John Paul II Foundation for the Sahel.

He said that for residents of the Sahel, "living conditions are deteriorating."

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Climate change-induced drought that has afflicted the Horn of Africa presents the opportunity for the Catholic Church in Ethiopia to work more closely with the government to address food shortages and development concerns, said an official of the country's bishops' conference.

Recalling when Ethiopian regimes in the 1970s and 1980s either did not have the capacity or the political will to face a series of famines, Father Hailegebriel Meleku, deputy secretary general of the Ethiopian Catholic Secretariat, said the country is now better poised to address its humanitarian problems, in part because church bodies have been mobilized during recent crises.