Pope Francis has recalled the moment he “lost his patience” with a woman who asked him to “bless my baby”, only to be presented with a small dog.
The head of the Catholic church, who has accused those who do not have children of “selfishness” despite not fathering any of his own, said he publicly lambasted the woman, telling her: “So many children are hungry and you bring me a little dog.”
The harsh comments followed sobering demographic projections in Italy, with the annual number of births dropping below 400,000 in 2022 for the first time since records began, marking the 14th consecutive annual decline.
Sitting alongside Ms Meloni – both figures were dressed in all-white – Pope Francis lent an anecdote to his theory that “dogs and cats are taking the place of children” in Italy.
He told a story of a woman whom he met at a Vatican audience two weeks ago who asked for a blessing for “her baby”, which turned out to be a small dog.
“I greeted the lady, she opened her bag and said ‘bless my baby’. It was a little dog,” he told the conference.
“I lost my patience and upbraided her, saying madam, so many children are hungry and you bring me a little dog.”
The Pope has referred to the declining birth rate in Italy as the “demographic winter”. The Rome conference he attended on Friday explicitly concerned methods of solving this problem.
Italy’s nationalist government is deeply anxious about predictions that the country’s population will shrink dramatically in the next couple of decades.
Giancarlo Giorgetti, the economy minister, said this week that Italy’s GDP could shrink by 18 percent over the next 20 years if the population continued to fall.
Pope Francis said on Friday that he believed young Italians were dissuaded from having children by “savage” economic conditions.
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Italy’s school population is predicted to contract by one million pupils over the next decade. A shrinking population will mean less economic productivity and fewer younger people having to pay for the welfare of older citizens.
Pope Francis has a history of criticising those that choose pets over children. He was accused at the start of last year of being out of touch with modern life.
In January 2022, during his weekly general audience at the Vatican, he said: “Today… we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child. Sometimes they have one, and that’s it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.”
He went on to say that couples who do not procreate deny themselves the joys of parenthood, a decision which “diminishes us, takes away our humanity”.
