Pope Francis is urging businesses to find a solution and highlighting the significance of allowing pregnant women to work.
He stated on Monday in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, “Please, this is a difficulty for working women: Study it, see how to ensure that a pregnant woman may continue, both with the child she is expecting and with her job.”
The General Confederation of Italian Industry, a group of businesspeople, and the business community at large were the recipients of the 85-year-old pontiff’s words. He warned that birth rates were too low and urged businesses to help their pregnant workers.
I’m not saying among you, but there is a fact that as soon as the belly starts to show, you are thrown out: ‘No, no, you can’t become pregnant,’” he warned.
“Still on the issue of the birth rate: Sometimes a woman who is hired here or works there is terrified to get pregnant.
Families are essential to a nation’s success and destiny, he said.
Pope Francis said that “urgent tangible action is required to help families and the birth rate.” “We must focus on this if we want to escape the demographic winter that Italy and other nations are now experiencing as soon as possible.
We are experiencing a horrible demographic winter that works against us and eliminates any chance of expansion.
“Today, I would argue, having children is a question of patriotism, also to lead the nation forward,” he said.
In the past, Pope Francis has voiced his worry about the dropping birth rate. He criticised the Western world’s low birth rate in May, calling it a “new poverty” and an urgent social disaster, and he criticised the replacement of children in society by dogs and cats in January, calling it a loss of civilisation.
The pope posed the question to society in 2021: “Do you value children or money more?”
He has also shown his support for women who work. During and after the coronavirus pandemic in 2021, Pope Francis called for increased support for working mothers, stating that women can significantly contribute to the “reconstruction of the economy and of the society to come.”
At the time, the pope called women’s presence “increasingly precious at the centre of the processes of social, political, occupational, and institutional renewal.”