Pope Francis warns that not having children shows a "form of selfishness"

The head of the Roman Catholic Church recently suggested that couples who do not have children — or chose to have pets instead of children — demonstrate a “form of selfishness.”  

Pope Francis — who leads the world’s 1.34 billion Catholics — made the comments while speaking about the virtue of parenthood and reflecting on the importance of foster and adoptive parenthood during a general audience in Vatican City, The Hill reported.

“Today we see a form of selfishness with our orphan [society],” the Pope said according to The Guardian. “Sometimes they have one and that’s it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children. This may make people laugh but it is a reality.”

“Giving up on being a mother and father can take some of your humanity away from us…society becomes older and without humanity because we lose the richness of motherhood and fatherhood,” he added. 

The Pontiff continued to speak about how the choice to not have children was contributing to declining birth rates in developed countries, noting that a “demographic winter” was affecting the world. He then encouraged couples who could not have their own biological children to consider adoption.

“Having a child is always a risk whether biologically or through adoption but what’s even more risky is renouncing or not having children,” he said. “We need to be open to motherhood and fatherhood otherwise we can be lacking, we can be lacking in ourselves and we can be lacking in humanity.” 

But simply having children is not enough, Pope Francis warned, noting that the goal must ultimately be to become a “true parent.”

“Fathers are not born but made… a man does not become a father but is just bringing a child into the world by taking up the responsibility to care for that child,” he noted.