Holy See calls for promoting family, fertility to resolve ageing problem

April 12, 2014: According to the Holy See, “The unsustainable phenomenon of ageing populations can only be resolved by promoting family life and fertility.” “Support systems for the ageing can only be sustained by a larger, not smaller, next generation, either by paying into a social security system, or by providing intergenerational family support directly,” said the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in New York, Indian Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, on Thursday. Addressing a session on population and development, he expressed alarm over a report of the UN Secretary General that no fewer than 80 countries now register a fertility rate below replacement level. He said the percentage of support to older persons by working-age adults is already low in most of the developed world, and continues to fall. Archbishop Chullikatt denounced the approach of treating fertility and pregnancy as a disease. In this regard he said, a more sensible approach should focus less on reducing fertility and more on programmes and values which support integral human development, namely: personal, social, and spiritual development. Access to education, economic opportunity, political stability, basic health care, and support for the family should serve as the key priorities for achieving such integral human development. The Holy See’s representative also criticized the legalization and liberalization of abortion as a right, saying eliminating the life of unborn children, the most defenceless and innocent among us, is not ‘progressive’.