The Pope has acknowledged that he recently lost patience with a woman who during the general audience asked him for a blessing for “her child” who turned out to be a dog that she took out of her bag. “Ma’am, many children suffer from hunger and you are with the little dog…”, replied the Pontiff.
He himself has recounted this and some other anecdotes of women who treat their dogs as if they were their children during his participation in the forum ‘General States of birth’, an initiative organized in Italy by the Forum of Family Associations, in the that the Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, also participated.
The Pontiff regrets that bringing children into the world “is perceived as a burden on families”
The Pontiff thus lamented that bringing children into the world “is perceived as a burden on families”, which “unfortunately, conditions the mentality of the young generations, who grow up in uncertainty, if not in disappointment and fear”.
For this reason, he has called for policies “with a vision of the future” to increase the birth rate in Europe while denouncing that women are “crushed by the burden of caring” and that they are forced to choose between their motherhood and their career. professional.
“They are the ones who suffer the most, young women, often forced to choose between a professional career and motherhood, or crushed by the burden of caring for their families, especially in the presence of frail elderly and dependent people,” she said.
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In Italy, 392,598 were born last year, a sharp drop that has reached its lowest point since the unity of Italy was proclaimed in 1861, 160 years ago, according to data from the annual report of the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT).
“The issue of the birth rate is central to everyone, especially for the future of Italy and Europe,” he considered. In fact, for the Pope, child births constitute “the main indicator to measure the hope of a people.”
Sitting on the stage of an auditorium in Rome together with the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, he pointed out: “If few are born, it means that there is little hope. And this not only has repercussions from an economic and social impact, but also undermines confidence in the future”.
Birth rate in Italy plummets
In addition, he has denounced that the richest can “allow themselves, thanks to their resources, greater freedom when it comes to choosing what way of life they want.” “This is unfair, as well as humiliating,” she has stressed.
On the other hand, he has given an account of the difficulties that young people face to start a family, such as finding “stable employment” or that houses are “prohibitively expensive” with “sky-high rents and insufficient salaries”.
“It is necessary to address the problem together, without ideological fences or preconceived positions. We cannot accept that our society stops being generative and degenerates into sadness. We cannot passively accept that so many young people fight to realize their family dream and are forced to lower the wish list, settling for private and mediocre substitutes: earning money, aspiring to a career, traveling, jealously guarding free time,” he asserted.
Finally, the Pontiff has also demanded that the birth rate and the reception of migrants never be opposed because “they are two sides of the same coin.” “They reveal to us how much happiness there is in the world,” he concluded.
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