Despite not getting involved in Italian politics and redirecting any questions about the Parliament to the Cardinal ZuppiThe Pope, president of the Episcopal Conference, from time to time participates in events with high-ranking politicians. As in the third edition of the General States of Birth held in Rome. These meetings were born in 2021 to seek a solution to a drama that plagues Italy in particular, but also Spain and almost all of Europe: there are no children.
According to Eurostat, the fertility rate in Spain has fallen in the last twenty years from 1.23 to 1.19 births per woman. In Italy they have been anchored at 1.25 for two decades. Francis rebelled and refused to "accept that our society stops generating and degenerates into sadness.". He asked for commitment and for couples to take steps to form a family. Something that would be helped by good salaries and reconciliation policies, which he also demands.
In a very human moment, Francis confessed how two weeks earlier he had shouted at a lady in a general audience. She had approached him with a purse which she opened in front of him saying: "Can you bless my baby?". Inside there was a dog and Francisco answered him: "Madam, so many children are hungry... and you come to me with the little dog?".
This is not his first fortunate or unfortunate comment on pets. In January of last year he already denounced in a catechesis on St. Joseph that "many couples want to have children, but then they have two cats.". "This denial of motherhood and fatherhood diminishes us."he added.
It goes without saying that Francis has nothing against puppies in particular, nor against women who do not have children (as if it were their sole and exclusive responsibility!). However, it is at these moments when this always joking Pope loses his temper a little that one smiles, looks at him with tenderness and says to oneself: "I'm not a dog, I'm a woman.But how free it is.".
Journalist specializing in religious information.
