Quemamodum The world's destitute children

Pius' main concern after the war was to provide help and comfort for the child refugees starving and destitute in the war's aftermath.He authored the encyclical Quemamodum. He was sensitive (spiritually) and could not help but envision the pictures he created in this encyclical.

They are uncertain wanderers uprooted and victimized by cruelty and the sins of omission of that generation. I can see them in my mind's eye drifting about as vagrants uncertainly and aimless in the streets of the cities. The sins of omission are a grave and severe indictment before God, especially in this matter.Liberality is never a loss but a gain in the sight of God, he so wrote. This pontiff had aid organizations but the task was too immense and he appealed to the world.

We almost seem to see with Our own eyes the vast hosts of children weakened or at death's door through starvation. They hold out their little hands asking for bread "and there is no one to break it unto them" Without home, without clothing, they shiver in the winter cold and die. And there are no fathers or mothers to warm and clothe them. Ailing, or even in the last stages of consumption, they are without the necessary medicines and medical care. We see them, too, passing before Our sorrowful gaze, wandering through the noisy city street, reduced to unemployment and moral corruption, or drifting as vagrants uncertainly about the cities, the towns, the countryside, while no one - alas - provides safe refuge for them against want, vice and crime. [2]