Pope Francis drew criticism and comparisons to Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance after praising Indonesians for having large families.
The pope is touring Southeast Asia this week and stopped on Wednesday to visit a cathedral in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. Outgoing President Joko Widodo and addressing a crowd filled with nuns, clerics, Catholics and others.
In 2020, America averaged just 1.6 births per woman, down significantly from the average of 3.6 births in the 1950s.
During his remarks, Pope Francis praised Indonesians for families with “three, four or five children”. He called children “the greatest wealth a nation can have” and condemned countries that effectively “imposed a law of death by limiting births . . .”
The pontiff also gently insisted that Indonesia could serve as an “example” to other countries in the world, where some “families choose to have a cat or a small dog instead of a child.”
Pope Francis did not name any specific country that implicitly or explicitly encourages pet ownership over parenting, although birth rates in Western countries have fallen sharply in recent decades. For example, in the United States, the average was only 1.6 births per woman in 2020, down significantly from the average of 3.6 births in the 1950s. World Bank informed.
Additionally, fully 62% of Americans own at least one pet, and more than half of those pet owners believe that their pets are as much a part of the family as their human members. Pew Research Poll Published last year.
Pope has the data on his side, but his comments nonetheless bring to mind some of the “childless cat ladies” comments made earlier by Sean Vance of Ohio.
In 2021, Vance, who is Catholic, told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the US is under the control of Democrats, big corporations and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable about their own lives and choices. They’ve created, and so the rest of us.” Wants to make the country miserable too,” Prati NPR.
In a report on the Pope’s recent comments, Hill published an article titled “Pope Francis wades into ‘childless cat ladies’ debate by praising Indonesians’ large families”.
Other, less prominent figures have made similar comments on social media, Daily Mail informed. A quick one X search suggesting that some users have indeed linked Pope Francis and Vance over their respective comments about babies and cats, although X’s post on the topic has remained almost entirely obscure, receiving little or no interaction from other users.
A related clip of the Pope’s speech in Jakarta can be seen here here.
Wednesday is not the first time Pope Francis has spoken out against the declining birth rate. At a conference in Rome back in May, he said“Houses are full of things and emptied of children, becoming very sad places. There is no shortage of small dogs, cats, no shortage of these. There is a lack of children.”
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has also sounded the alarm about the low birth rate. In April, he Tweeted that “if the birth rate continues to decline, human civilization will come to an end.”
Reuters noted that while the Indonesian birth rate surpasses most Western countries, its birth rate is still falling.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters and get stories like these straight to your inbox. Sign up here!
Post Pope Francis draws comparisons to JD Vance after warning of falling birth rate: ‘law of death’ appeared first The Blaze.