During a birth conference in Rome on Friday (12), Pope Francis criticized “selfish and individualistic” decisions that are leading the country to a demographic crisis, encouraging Italian couples to have more children instead of pets. pet.
According to the news agency Associated Press (AP), the pontiff also called for more political action to tackle the financial precariousness of young couples and reverse what he called the demographic winter. “Let’s not resign ourselves to sterile monotony and pessimism,” Francis told an annual gathering of pro-family organizations. “Let’s not believe that history is already marked, that nothing can be done to reverse the trend.”
In 2022, the average birth rate in Italy was seven births per thousand inhabitants, while the number of deaths was 12 per thousand citizens in the same period. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is preparing a campaign to bring the number of annual births by 2033 to at least nine per 1,000 people, a rate that demographers say is necessary to avoid an economy collapsing, boosting population. wage earner in relation to the number of retirees.
The conservative political leader was also present at the birth conference and gave a speech stating that demographic trends must be reversed without “surrogacy”, in reference to migration incentive policies and the registration of children as children of a same-sex couple. .
“We want a nation where it is no longer scandalous to say that – whatever the legitimate free choices and inclinations of each person – we are all born of a man or a woman”, said Meloni, as recorded by the AP. “Where it is not taboo to say that motherhood is not for sale, that the womb is not for rent and children are not over-the-counter products that you can choose from the shelf as if you were in the supermarket and maybe return if later the product does not match what do you expect.”
Meloni was elected last year after a pro-family “God, family, homeland” campaign, and since then her government has proposed measures to try to encourage families to have more children, including tax cuts. Italy’s fertility rate, at 1.24 children per woman, is among the lowest in the world.
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