Pope Francis has indicated that couples who prefer pets to children are selfish.
Substituting pets for children “takes away our humanity,” the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics said, wading into a discussion known for its poisonous tone on social media.
As he presided over his first public audience of the new year, Pope Francis remarked that individuals who adopt dogs instead of children are demonstrating “a type of selfishness.”
“How many children in the world are waiting for someone to take care of them,” the pontiff said in a speech at the Vatican.
“And how many spouses wish to be fathers and mothers but are unable to do so for biological reasons; or, although they already have children, they want to share their family’s affection with those who have been left without.”
However, the declining birth rate in affluent countries is causing alarm. According to the US Census Bureau, the proportion of married couples with children in households declined from 40% in 1970 to 20% in 2012. However, seven out of ten homes had a pet.
During the Covid-19 outbreak, the birth rate dropped even more dramatically. In December 2020, 22 percent fewer babies were born in Italy than in the same month the previous year. In Spain, the drop was 20%, and in France, it was 13%.
Francis told the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero in 2014 that having dogs instead of children was “another tendency of cultural degradation,” and that having emotional relationships with pets was easier than having “complicated” relationships with parents and children.
Francis’ catechism lecture focused on Joseph, who Francis described as Jesus’ “foster father.”
He reiterated his call for couples to have more children in order to overcome the “demographic winter” that has gripped most of the West, and he suggested that individuals who are unable to have children consider adoption.
“We see a type of selfishness today,” he remarked, “we see people who do not want to have children.”
Saint Joseph, you who loved Jesus with fatherly love, be close to the many children who have no family and who long for a daddy and mommy. Support the couples who are unable to have children, help them to discover, through this suffering, a greater plan. #GeneralAudience
— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) January 5, 2022
“Sometimes they have only one (child) and that’s it, but they have two dogs, two cats,” he said. “Yes, dogs and cats take the place of children,” he added. “Yes it’s funny, I understand, but it is the reality.”
He also said that adopting a child is “one of the highest kinds of love, fatherhood, and motherhood.”
For the first time, a layman and a nun, rather than a shrouded monsignor, presented English and Spanish translations of Francis’ weekly catechism lesson, emphasising his demand for a less-clericalized Catholic Church.
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