“Italy is a country with little future, only the rich can have children”

Raising a family in Italy is becoming a “titanic effort” that only the rich can afford. This is what Pope Francis told Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni this Friday in the act “The General States of Natality” held in Rome. And he warned him of the cause: the “wild” conditions of the free market prevent young people from having children.

For the Pope, this diagnosis shows that Italy is a country with little futuresince “the birth of children is the main indicator to measure the hope of a people. If few are born it means there is little hope. And this not only has repercussions from an economic and social impact, but also undermines confidence in the future.”

The “uncertainty, disappointment and fear” that have invaded the minds of the young generations cause, continues the Supreme Pontiff, that “only the richest can afford, thanks to their resources, greater freedom when choosing what way of life they want. And this is unfair besides humiliatinghe said, sitting across from Meloni.

“The difficulty to find a stable job, the difficulty to keep it, the prohibitively expensive houses, the sky-high rents and the insufficient wages they are real problems. The free market, without the necessary corrective measures, runs wild and produces increasingly serious situations and inequalities,” he added.

The Pope told real anecdotes that, in his opinion, show that pets are replacing children in some homes. He recounted how on one occasion, when a woman asked him to bless “her child” and took a dog out of his bag, he lost patience and told her: “Ma’am, so many children are starving and you are here with the little dog… .”.

[Vaticangate, la conjura ultra para colocar al próximo Papa: las ‘cenas de cuervos’ para destruir al ‘comunista’ Francisco]

However, the Pope insisted that this situation was due to “almost insurmountable limitations” for young women, often forced to choose between their professional career and motherhood.

“We cannot passively accept that so many young people struggle to realize their family dream and are forced to lower the bar of desire, settling for mediocre substitutes: earn money, aspire to a career, travel, jealously guard free time,” he said.

Answer from Meloni

Francisco’s speech was hard because that is the birth data in Italy, where in 2022 the lowest birth rate in history with only 393,000 new births. It’s about the fourteenth consecutive annual fall, and the total population decreased by 179,000 people, to the 58.85 million.

Before taking the floor, the Pope asked Meloni for “policies that regenerate hope for the future” in Italy. “It is necessary to tackle the problem together, without ideological fences or preconceived positions” and pointed out that “the reception of migrants should never be opposed to life because they are two sides of the same coin“.

[Meloni no avisó a Sánchez de su política de mano dura en migración pese a prometer “colaboración”]

Then came the turn for Meloni to respond to the harsh criticism of the Supreme Pontiff. The prime minister defended a country where “it is not scandalous” to say that “we were all born of a man and a woman, that maternity is not for sale, that wombs are not for rent and that children are not chosen as if they were over-the-counter products“.

“We live in a time when Talking about birth, motherhood and family is increasingly difficultIt seems like a revolutionary act,” said the far-right leader sitting next to Francisco.

Meloni defended that the birth rate and the family are “the absolute priority” of his Government because: “We want Italy to have a future againto hope and believe in a better future than this uncertain present”, he yielded.

And he agreed with the Pope on something: “Lace Women are not free if they have to choose between children and work. If women do not have the opportunity to realize their desire for motherhood without giving up their professional desire, It is not that they do not have equal opportunities, it is that they will not have freedom“.

Population decline is one of the main concerns of the third country of the eurozone. The economy minister warned this week that Italian GDP risks drop 18 percentage points in the next two decades if the current birth rate is maintained.

The Minister of Education stated on Thursday that, based on current demographic data, the Italian school population will be reduced by one million people in the next 10 years.