The stock market is up, real estate is soaring and yet food bank use is through the roof.

When Pope Francis initiated the World Day of the Poor to be marked on the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time — Nov. 18 this year — it was easy for people to see this targeted at the familiar pictures that are all too real of Third World poverty.

VILLAVICENCIO, Colombia (CNS) -- People in need in this city set in the heart of Colombia's cattle country line up outside the Pope Francis food bank, a warehouse built with a donation from the pontiff.

TORONTO - A renovated four-bedroom house in Riverdale recently sold for $2.1 million. Half of 176 houses sold in the Toronto neighbourhood earlier this year went for more than $716,000. The traffic on the neighbourhood streets is backed up with high-end Mercedes, Lexuses and other exotic brands. Coffee in the neighbourhood will set you back the better part of a $5 bill.

OTTAWA - This year’s HungerCourt 2015 report  reveals food bank use in Canada has risen for the second consecutive year and remains at near record levels.

TORONTO - The walls of the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen’s Park are engraved with the names of former legislators from the province’s past. Not many of these names are female. It’s something a group of girls from Waterloo, Ont., wants to change.

More than 840,000 Canadians got food from a food bank in March this year. That isn’t the number who needed food they couldn’t afford. It’s just the number who swallowed their pride and figured out when and where they could collect a box of groceries consisting for the most part of stuff grocery shoppers didn’t want for themselves.