Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin has warned of Europe’s looming “demographic winter” due to low birth rates. Source: The Tablet.
He said the Catholic Church and state actors have a responsibility to support families and allow them to give of themselves generously.
“I believe that to counter the dramatic decline in birth rates, a series of actions by distinct actors are necessary and urgent,” Cardinal Parolin said.
“The Church, states, and intermediate organisations should all become aware of the importance – I would dare say ‘vital’ importance – of this issue and intervene with a series of measures that should be well coordinated, if possible.”
Care must be taken to “carefully [listen] to families to identify their real needs and provide them with help, impacting the concreteness of their lives in order to remove various obstacles to the generous acceptance of new life,” the cardinal said.
Global fertility has been falling for decades, with the problem often most acute in industrialised nations with higher standards of living, even while the fertility rates in many developing nations with strained resources, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, continue to climb.
Many of the world’s most developed countries are well below the “replacement rate” of fertility – generally about 2.1 births per woman over her lifetime – needed to keep a population stable, according to data gathered by the World Bank.
This is not the first time Cardinal Parolin has addressed the possibility of a “demographic winter” – a dramatic and highly consequential shrinking of population caused by low birth rates.
He did so in 2021 in a speech in France where he similarly urged the continent to rediscover its Christian roots.
Pope Francis has himself in the past described the low number of births as “a figure that reveals a great concern for tomorrow”.
He has criticised what he describes as the “social climate in which starting a family has turned into a titanic effort, instead of being a shared value that everyone recognises and supports”.
FULL STORY
Vatican secretary of state warns of ‘demographic winter’ in Europe (By Jonah McKeown, CNA via The Tablet)
