Pope Francis pressed his campaign Friday to urge Italians to have children, calling for long-term policies to help families and warning that the country’s demographic crisis was threatening the future.
“The number of births is the first indicator of the hope of a people,” Francis told an annual gathering of pro-family groups. “Without children and young people, a country loses its desire for the future.”
It was Francis’ latest appeal for Italy – and beyond that Europe – to invert what he has called the demographic winter facing many industrialized countries.
Italy’s birth rate, already one of the lowest in the world, has been falling steadily for about 15 years and reached a record low last year with 379,000 babies born.
With the Vatican’s strong backing, the right-wing government of Premier Giorgia Meloni has mounted a campaign to encourage at least 500,000 births annually by 2033, a rate that demographers say is necessary to prevent the economy from collapsing under the weight of Italy’s aging population.
Francis called for long-term political strategies and policies to encourage couples to have children, including an end to precarious work contracts and impediments to buying homes, and viable alternatives so women don’t have to choose between motherhood and careers.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Faith N
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://www.offthepress.com and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.