(LifeSiteNews) — During a meeting today with Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Pope Leo XIV addressed the dangerous decline in birth rates across Europe and called for greater support for traditional families and family values.
“In recent decades, as we know, Europe has witnessed a significant decline in the birth rate,” the Pope said to Italian officials, as reported by Catholic Sat. “This requires commitment to promoting family-friendly choices at various levels, supporting their efforts, promoting their values, and protecting their needs and rights.”
“‘Father,’ ‘mother,’ ‘son,’ ‘daughter,’ ‘grandfather,’ and ‘grandmother’ are, in the Italian tradition, words that naturally express and evoke feelings of love, respect, and dedication, sometimes heroic, to the good of the domestic community and therefore to that of society as a whole,” noted the Pope.
“In particular, I would like to emphasize the importance of ensuring all families the essential support of dignified employment, under fair conditions and with attention to the needs of motherhood and fatherhood,” he continued.
“Let us do everything we can to give confidence to families, especially young families, so that they can look to the future with serenity and grow in harmony,” urged the Pope.
“There is a certain tendency, in these times, not to appreciate enough, at various levels, models and values developed over centuries that mark our cultural identity, sometimes even presuming to erase their historical and human relevance,” said Pope Leo. “Let us not disdain what our fathers lived through and what they passed down to us.”
