Pope Francis has warned that only the rich can afford to have children in Italy which is leading to a rapidly declining population — and pets replacing kids.
The Pope called on Italians to reverse the country’s falling birth rate which was the lowest in the European Union last year.
He said “savage” free-market conditions — such as expensive housing and insufficient wages — were preventing the young from having children.
The Pope said pets were replacing children in some households and recounted how a woman at a recent audience had opened her bag and asked for a papal blessing for “her baby”, only to reveal that it was a dog.
“I lost my patience and upbraided her saying many children are hungry and you bring me a dog,” he said.
But he acknowledged there were “almost insurmountable constraints” on young women forced to choose between their career and motherhood.
Given the high costs involved in raising children, people were revising their priorities, he said.
Births in Italy dropped below 400,000 in 2022 for the first time, registering a 14th consecutive annual fall, with the overall population declining by 179,000 to 58.85 million.
Speaking at a conference on the growing demographic crisis, Pope Francis said the declining birthrate signalled a lack of hope for the future, with younger generations weighed down by a sense of uncertainty, fragility and precariousness.
“Difficulty in finding a stable job, difficulty in keeping one, prohibitively expensive houses, sky-high rents and insufficient wages are real problems,” he said, sitting alongside Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
“The free market, without the necessary corrective measures, becomes savage and produces increasingly serious situations and inequalities.
“We cannot passively accept that so many young people struggle to realise their family dream and are forced to lower the bar of desire, settling for mediocre substitutes — making money, aiming for a career, travelling, jealously guarding leisure time,” he said.
A shrinking population is a major worry for the euro zone’s third-largest country, with the economy minister this week warning Italy’s GDP risked dropping by 18 percentage points across the next two decades if current birth trends continued.
The education minister said on Thursday that current demographics suggested Italy’s school population was set to shrink by a million across the next 10 years.
