The Pope sees Meloni at the States General of the birth rate: “Forward-looking policies are needed”

“The birth of children is the main indicator for measuring the hope of a people”: this is the message of Pope francesco, who spoke in the morning at the forum of the “General states of the birth rate”, underway between yesterday and today in Rome. The Holy Father, greeted upon his entry by a long applause and accompanied to his chair by the premier Giorgia Meloniinsisted on the close relationship between birth rate and reception: “A happy community naturally develops the desire to generate, integrate and welcomewhile an unhappy society is reduced to a sum of individuals who try to defend what they have at all costs”. He then underlined the major difficulties encountered by young women, “forced to the crossroads between career and motherhood, or crushed by the weight of for their families, especially in the presence of frail elderly people and people who are not independent”. But, the Pontiff observes, “the family is not part of the problem, it is its solution“.

Precariousness, according to the Pope, weighs above all on the “younger generations, for whom tomorrow seems like a mountain impossible to climb”. Francesco also spends a word on the problem of high rents, which emerged from student protests in various universities in Italy: “Difficulty finding a stable job, difficulty keeping it, prohibitively expensive houses, skyrocketing rents and insufficient wages are real problems and they are problems that challenge politics“.

The solution, for the Pontiff, is therefore found in “forward-looking policies, without ideological barriers and preconceived positions“. An appeal addressed first of all to the current government and to Giorgia Meloni, who spoke shortly before in the presence of the Pope. For the premier, until women “have the opportunity to realize their desire for motherhood without giving up their professional they will have equal opportunities and will not have freedom”. And, on government policies, he adds: “The birth rate cuts across all of our choiceswe want to have the family’s point of view, at 360 degrees, on all the policies that the government carries out”.

Finally, wishing “a nation in which it is not scandalous to say that we are all born of a man and a woman, that motherhood is not for sale, that the uterus is not rented and that children are not an over-the-counter product that can be chosen from the shelf like at the supermarket“.