Pope Francis has warned Italy of the dire consequence of its falling birth rate, saying “a society that does not welcome life stops living”. He was addressing a conference on Italy’s looming demographic disaster. The Italian fertility rate had dropped to an average of 1.27 births per woman in 2019, well below the European average of 1.53. In 2020, fewer babies were born than at any time since Italian unification in 1861, which, discounting immigration, meant a decline in population of over 300,000 people. The Pope noted: “Italy reached the lowest number of births since national unity, not because of Covid-19, but because of a continuous, progressive downward trend, an increasingly harsh winter.”
20 May 2021, The Tablet
We need more children
Difficult demographics
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