The Pope and Meloni show harmony in the policies of promotion of the birth rate

2023-05-12T17:07:08.828Z

Highlights: The Pontiff participates in an act of the far-right Executive to encourage births. Government says Italians risk being displaced by migrant population. Italy has reached the lowest birth rate in history, with only 393,000 new births in 2022. "We live in a time when talking about birth, motherhood and family is increasingly difficult, it seems like a revolutionary act," said the far right leader sitting next to the Pope. The Pope, obviously, does not consider the same in that section.

The Pontiff participates in an act of the far-right Executive to encourage births. Government says Italians risk being displaced by migrant population

Demographics, one might say, make strange companions of cause. And Rome attended this Friday an act built through a devastating fact: Italy has reached the lowest birth rate in history, with only 393,000 new births in 2022, just over 1% less than the previous year. The country is aging and the data opens the door to an ideological and religious gale. Brothers of Italy, the party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, argues that the nation is in danger of suffering what they call "ethnic substitution," that is, that the population of Italian origin ends up being outnumbered by people of other origins and their children. Francesco Lollobrigida, Minister of Agriculture and Meloni's brother-in-law, said so and reaffirmed it on Thursday. But it also bleeds the basic principle of Catholicism, based on the family. That is why the Pope attended on Friday what the government called "The general states of the birth rate."

Francis, always careful in choosing his international travels, came from sharing some positions with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán last week. It was the second time he had come to Budapest in two years. An approach in which many saw a question of shared agenda in matters such as birth, abortion or the idea of family. On Friday, similar issues approached the Italian government, formed by the coalition led by the far-right Meloni, who surprised dressed in white with the Pontiff, breaking the protocol known as "white privilege", by which only some Catholic queens can wear that color in acts with the Pope.

The diagnosis of Meloni and the Pope is slightly different. Or at least the risks involved in the situation. For the Executive of the far-right leader, Italy runs the risk of suffering an ethnic substitution. An idea clearly drawn from the supremacist theory of the Great Replacement of French origin and according to which white Catholics and the European Christian population is gradually being replaced by people of non-European origin. Specifically by Arabs and Africans. The idea, a conspiracy theory championed by far-right politicians such as Eric Zemmour, who won nearly 2.5 million votes in the first round of last year's French presidential election, is the workhorse of white supremacists and one of the intellectual underpinnings of many of the attacks that have occurred in recent years against mosques. migrant communities or racial minorities in Europe and the United States.

The Pope, obviously, does not consider the same in that section. "The birth rate, as well as the reception (of migrants) should never be opposed because they are two sides of the same coin, they reveal to us how much happiness there is in the world," he said. In addition, he told two anecdotes that he has lived of women who treated their dogs like their children and that, on one occasion during the hearing, when one asked him to bless "her child" and took a dog from the bag, he "lost patience" and said: "Madam, so many children are hungry and you are with the puppy ...". Sitting on the stage of an auditorium in Rome next to the Italian prime minister, he said: "The birth of children, in fact, is the main indicator to measure the hope of a people. If few are born, it means that there is little hope. And this not only has repercussions from an economic and social impact, but also undermines confidence in the future."

Meloni and the Pope seem very aligned on this issue. The prime minister, in fact, defended before the Pontiff a country where "it is not scandalous" to say that "we were all born of a man and a woman" and that children are not products to sell. "We live in a time when talking about birth, motherhood and family is increasingly difficult, it seems like a revolutionary act," said the far-right leader sitting next to Francis. Meloni insisted that the birth rate and the family are "the absolute priority" of his government: "We want Italy to have a future again, to hope and believe in a better future than this uncertain present."

Francis, in turn, also believes it is a priority issue for the country. And for the world. Although population growth is increasingly unsustainable. "It is necessary to address the problem together, without ideological fences or preconceived positions. We cannot accept that our society ceases to be generative and degenerates into sadness. We cannot passively accept that so many young people struggle to realize their family dream and are forced to lower the bar of desire, settling for private and mediocre substitutes: earning money, aspiring to a career, traveling, jealously guarding free time."

Follow all the international information on Facebook and Twitter, or in our weekly newsletter.