ROME — Pope Francis denounced the “murderous practice of abortion” this week, asserting that “nothing is worth the life of a child.”
The “pathological individualism” of many developed countries is harmful to children, the pontiff told world leaders gathered for a Vatican-sponsored international summit on children’s rights, and sometimes “they are mistreated or even put to death by the very people who should be protecting and nurturing them.”
“In the name of this throwaway mentality, in which the human being becomes all-powerful, unborn life is sacrificed through the murderous practice of abortion,” the pope contended.
“Abortion suppresses the life of children and cuts off the source of hope for the whole of society,” he declared, and thus denied “the inestimable value of life.”
This is a tragic sign of the “throwaway culture of waste and profit,” he argued, “in which everything is bought and sold without respect or care for life, especially when that life is small and defenseless.”
“In truth, nothing is worth the life of a child,” Francis said. “To kill children is to deny the future.”
In his address, the pope also noted the immense suffering because of the wars taking place around the globe.
Pope Francis: Alleged ‘Right to Abortion’ Undermines Human Rights https://t.co/YzDaUYDgAt
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“Today, more than forty million children have been displaced by conflict and about a hundred million are homeless,” he stated.
“There is also the tragedy of child slavery: some one hundred and sixty million children are victims of forced labor, trafficking, abuse and exploitation of all kinds, including compulsory marriages,” he asserted.
The pope also lamented the many minors who live in “limbo” because they were not registered at birth and live an “invisible” existence, specifically referencing children arriving at the U.S. border with Mexico.
We can think of “the ‘undocumented’ children at the border of the United States, those first victims of that exodus of despair and hope made by the thousands of people coming from the South towards the United States of America, and many others,” he said.
