Arriving shortly after 9 a.m., Pope Francis took his seat at center stage, flanked by sitting children on both sides, and delivered a speech that, while cautionary and at times striking a dire tone, was also rooted in hope, with the Holy Father arguing that it is “important to meet and work together to promote birth rates with realism, foresight, and courage.”
“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,” the pope said.
“Unfortunately,” the pope continued, “if we were to rely 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 is increasingly transforming into an old, tired, and resigned continent, so committed to exorcizing loneliness and anxieties that it is no longer able to enjoy, in the civilization of the gift, the true beauty of life,” Francis continued.
The Holy Father sharply rebuked population alarmism pushed by some theories such as Malthusianism, which posits that unchecked birth rates will quickly exhaust agricultural resources, leading to famine and war. The pope called those theories “long out of date.”
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