(ANSA) - VATICAN CITY, 05 JAN - The Pope asks the institutions to simplify the procedure for adoptions. "We must not be afraid to choose the path of adoption, to take the 'risk' of acceptance". "I hope that the institutions will always be ready to help in this sense of adoption, by seriously watching but also simplifying the necessary process so that the dream of many little ones who need a family, and of many spouses who wish to give themselves in love, can come true", he said in the general audience, continuing the catechesis on St. Joseph, today focusing on the aspect of "putative father" of Jesus.
The Pope also spoke of the "demographic winter": "Many couples have no children because they do not want one and no more" but they have "dogs and cats that take the place of children". "This denial of motherhood and fatherhood diminishes us, takes away humanity, civilization becomes older and without humanity because the richness of fatherhood and motherhood is lost. And the country that has no children suffers." "I ask Saint Joseph - he continued - for the thanks for waking up conscience and thinking about this: having children, motherhood and fatherhood is the fullness of a person's life". Generating children or adopting "is a risk but more risky is not having them, denying motherhood and paternity". "A man who does not develop a sense of motherhood is missing something."
Finally, Pope Francis underlined that "we live in an age of orphanhood", "our civilization is a little orphan, it feels this orphanhood".
The Pope invoked the help of Saint Joseph, "to resolve the sense of orphanhood that today is so bad for us".
(HANDLE).
