The decline in the birth rate must be addressed with “foresight”. “At an institutional level, effective policies and courageous, concrete and long-term choices are urgently needed.” The Pope said this to the States General of the birth rate. “There is a need for a greater commitment on the part of all governments, so that the young generations are put in a position to be able to realize their legitimate dreams”. For this reason we must “put a mother in the position of not having to choose between work and caring for her children; or free many young couples from the burden of job insecurity and the impossibility of buying a house”.
“The number of births is the first indicator of a people’s hope. Without children and young people, a country loses its desire for the future”. “In Italy, for example, the average age – continued Pope Francis – is currently forty-seven, and new negative records continue to be set”. “Unfortunately, if we were to base ourselves on this data, we would be forced to say that Italy is progressively losing its hope for the future, like the rest of Europe: the Old Continent – Francis said again – is increasingly transforming into a old, tired and resigned, so busy exorcising loneliness and anxieties that he is no longer able to enjoy, in the civilization of the gift, the true beauty of life”.
“The problem of our world is not the children that are born: it is selfishness, consumerism and individualism, which make people full, lonely and unhappy.” Pope Francis recalled that “in the past, there was no lack of studies and theories that warned about the number of inhabitants of the Earth, because the birth of too many children would have created economic imbalances, lack of resources and pollution. I have always been struck by how these theses, now dated and long out of date, spoke of human beings as if they were problems. But human life – the Pontiff underlined – is not a problem, it is a gift. It is the basis of pollution and hunger in the world there are no children who are born, but the choices of those who think only of themselves, the delirium of an unbridled, blind and rampant materialism, of a consumerism which, like an evil virus, attacks at the root the existence of people and society society”. Therefore “the problem is not how many there are in the world, but what world we are building; it is not children, but selfishness, which creates injustices and structures of sin”. And then “houses are filled with objects and emptied of children, becoming very sad places”.
“There is a fact that a demography scholar told me: at the moment the investments that generate the most income are the arms factory and contraceptives: one destroys life, the other prevents life. “And these are the investments that give more income”, “is bad”. The Pope said this in his speech to the General States on birthrates.
The future is not built only by having children, another important part is missing, the grandparents”, added the Pope. “Today there is a culture of hiding grandparents, sending them to a retirement home. It’s changed a bit due to retirement… but the trend is the same: discarding grandparents”. “Please don’t forget grandparents”, “grandparents alone, grandparents, discarded, this is cultural suicide”, ” we take care of the children but also care of the grandparents, it is very important”, concluded the Pope.
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