One could say that demographics are strange companions to the matter. And Rome attended an event this Friday based on a devastating fact: Italy hit its lowest birth rate in history with just 393,000 new births in 2022, down just over 1% from the previous year. The country is aging and the data is opening the door to an ideological and religious storm. The Brothers of Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party, claim the nation is at risk of suffering what they call “ethnic substitution”, i.e. This was said and reinforced on Thursday by Francesco Lollobrigida, Minister of Agriculture and Meloni’s brother-in-law. But it also bleeds against the fundamental principle of Catholicism, which is based on the family. For this reason, the Pope visited what the government called “General Birthplaces” on Friday.
Francisco, who has always been cautious about choosing his trips abroad, shared some views with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán just last week. It was the second time in two years that he came to Budapest. An approach in which many saw a common agenda in issues such as birth, abortion or the idea of family. On Friday, the Italian government was dealing with similar issues with the coalition led by the far-right Meloni, which surprised the pope in white, violating a protocol known as “white privilege” that only allows some Catholic queens to wear the color in Files with the Pope.
The diagnosis of Meloni and the Pope is slightly different. Or at least the risks involved in the situation. Italy is at risk of ethnic substitution for the far-right leader’s executive branch. An idea that clearly derives from the supremacist theory of the great replacement of French origin, according to which white Catholics and the European Christian population are gradually being replaced by people of non-European origin. Especially from Arabs and Africans. The idea, a conspiracy theory espoused by far-right politicians like Éric Zemmour, which garnered nearly 2.5 million votes in the first round of France’s presidential election last year, is the workhorse of white supremacists and one of the intellectual mainstays of many attacks launched in the have taken place against mosques, migrant communities or ethnic minorities in Europe and the United States in recent years.
Obviously the Pope is not thinking about the same thing in this passage. “The birth rate and the reception (of migrants) should never be fought because they are two sides of the same coin, they show us how lucky there is in the world,” he said. In addition, he related two anecdotes that he lived with women who treated their dogs like their children and that once during the audience, when one asked him to bless “her child” and took a dog out of her bag, he “lost patience” and said to her: “Lady, so many children are hungry and you are with the puppy…”. Sitting next to the Italian Prime Minister on the stage of an auditorium in Rome, he stressed: “Indeed, the birth of children is the most important indicator of a people’s hope.” If few are born, it means that there is little hope. And that not only has economic and social repercussions, but also undermines confidence in the future.”
Meloni and the Pope seem to be very much in agreement on this issue. In fact, the Prime Minister defended before the Pope a country where “it is not scandalous” to say that “we were all born of male and female” and that children are not products to be sold. “We live in a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to talk about birth, motherhood and family. It appears to be a revolutionary act,” said the far-right leader, who was seated next to Francisco. Meloni insisted that the birth rate and the family are “absolute priorities” for her government: “We want Italy to have a future again, that we hope and believe in a better future than this uncertain present.”
Francisco, on the other hand, also believes that it is a priority issue for the country. And for the world. Although population growth is increasingly unsustainable. “It is necessary to tackle the problem together, without ideological barriers or preconceived positions. We cannot accept that our society is no longer productive and falling into sadness. We simply cannot accept that so many young people, struggling to achieve their family dream, are forced to lower the bar of desire and settle for private and mediocre alternatives: make money, pursue a career, travel, jealous of their free time beware.”
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