ROME – Pope Francis has urged Italians to end the country’s ‘demographic winter’ by having more children, calling on Italy’s Day for Life Sunday.
“Today is the Day for Life in Italy with the theme ‘Freedom and life’, the pope said following his weekly Angelus prayer on Sunday. “I join the Italian bishops in remembering that freedom is the great gift God has given us to seek and reach our own and those of others, beginning with the primary good of life.”
“Our society must be helped to heal from all attacks on life so that life can be defended at every stage,” Francis continued, in covert reference to abortion and euthanasia, two topics to which he frequently returns.
“And I want to add one of my concerns: the Italian demographic winter,” he said. ‘In Italy, births have declined and the future is in jeopardy. Let’s take this concern and try to make sure this demographic winter ends and a new spring of boys and girls blooms. ”
According to Italy’s official National Statistics Office (ISTAT), the already low birth rate in the country drops to dangerous levels, with total births in 2020 at the lowest level in the 150 years since the unification of Italy and 2021 is expected to be even lower.
In the five-year period of January 1, 2015 and January 1, 2020, the population of Italy in Italy decreased by 551 thousand. In terms of births, there was a reduction from 576,659 births in 2008 to 420,170 in 2019 and a forecast of 408,000 for the year 2020, once the final numbers are available.
For 2021, ISTAT has estimated a new record low of around 393 000, based on factors such as the decline in the population of women in the fertile year, the economic crisis of Italy and recent trends in the decision of couples to have children.
“Low fertility (currently 1.29 children per woman in 2019) is the most representative indication of the demographic disorder in our country, and the causes of this phenomenon can be traced to various factors,” ISTAT stated.
“This probably includes the postponement of the life stage that leads to the constant increase in the average age of women with their first child,” he adds, noting that many couples who plan to have children eventually procrastinate and eventually abandon these plans due to economic and social factors beyond their control.
The pope has often commented on the decline in Europe, comparing the continent to a sterile grandmother who no longer gives birth to children.
Europe, Francis told the European Parliament in 2014, is often seen as ‘elderly and backward’, like a ‘grandmother, no longer fertile and alive’. As a result, the rest of the world looks at it “with aloofness, mistrust and even sometimes with suspicion,” he said.
The ‘great ideas that once inspired Europe’, he said, seem to be being replaced by the bureaucratic techniques of its institutions. ‘
The birth rate in Europe has dropped in part because Europeans are too focused on their personal well-being, the pope said in an interview the following year.
“I heard it years ago in my own family, from my Italian cousins here, ‘No, no kids, we’d rather go on holiday or buy a villa, or this or that. “And then the elderly are left alone,” he said.
“Europe is not dead yet,” he said. “It’s half a grandmother, but can go back to a mother.”