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“Be careful of those ‘crocodiles’ who want to change your culture, who want to change your history. Stay faithful. And do not go near those ‘crocodiles’ because they bite, and they bite hard.” Using a metaphor perhaps confusing to a Western ear, but very concrete for the East Timorese crowd who reacted enthusiastically, Pope Francis took aim at organizations tying development aid with measures undermining the freedom of families.
In his sights: birth control and the teaching of certain gender theories. Wherever he goes, Pope Francis never ceases to denounce the “ideological colonization” that seeks to impose certain anti-Christian ideologies of the West on the rest of the world.
In East Timor, one of the world's youngest nations both in terms of its sovereignty — recognized only since 2002 — and its age pyramid, the Pope marveled at the sight of so many children. Around 600,000 people turned out on Tuesday for the Pope's Mass, almost half the total population of this country, whose oldest members were decimated by the war against the Indonesian occupiers.
But the Pope spoke with an eye to the future. “How wonderful that here in Timor-Leste there are so many children. Indeed, you are a young country and we can see every corner of your land teeming with life,” he marveled, pointing out that “young people are present, constantly renewing our energy and our lives.”
Birth control, “a law of death”
Following in the footsteps of his predecessors, Pope Francis has embraced promoting a culture of life. In his speech to the civil authorities of Indonesia on September 4, the first address of this extensive tour, the Pontiff was very firm.
“A considerable part of humanity is left on the margins, without the means for a dignified existence and no defense against the serious and growing social imbalances that trigger acute conflicts. How is this often resolved? With a law of death, that is by limiting births, limiting the greatest richness that a nation can have, its births,” he denounced.
The Pope was delighted to see in Indonesia “families with three, four, or five children,” seeing it as “an example for all countries” at a time when the collapse of the birth rate is accelerating at an alarming rate in many countries around the world.
“Perhaps some families prefer to have a cat or a small dog, and not a child, but this is not right,” Francis said. He was alluding to an attitude that is increasingly widespread in the West, but also in Japan and South Korea, where, tellingly, sales of dog strollers now exceed those of baby strollers!
The family is essential to society
Addressing the authorities of the city-state of Singapore, which has become a stronghold of international finance in recent years, the Argentine Pontiff hammered home the point. “The most profitable investment in God’s eyes, what is it? It is ourselves, all of us, for we are beloved children of the same Father, called in turn to spread love.”
He reminded us that the family “is where we learn to be loved and to love, the first place where everyone learns to relate to others.”
Praising the efforts of institutions in Singapore to “promote, protect, and support family unity,” Pope Francis acknowledged that “the foundations on which families are built are being challenged by current social conditions, and run the risk of being weakened.” The head of the Catholic Church therefore insisted that families must be able to “transmit the values that give meaning and form to life” and “teach young people to build solid, healthy relationships."
These appeals are in line with those of John Paul II, who came to Singapore in 1986. At that time, he invited local Catholics to reject any policy of imposed family planning, a divisive issue in this small territory subject to strong demographic pressure. “I wish to assure couples that the Church supports them as they strive to exercise responsibly their fundamental right to form families, to bear and rear their children without any type of coercion or pressure,” the Polish Pope said at the time.
As the decades go by, and globalization accelerates, the popes are staying the course in defending life and the family against anything that might jeopardize fundamental human freedoms and God's plans.
