Pope Francis has repeated his divisive comments that in some countries people prefer having pets to children, a message that has struck a chord with many conservatives around the world. <\/p>\n
The idea has re-entered the American political dialogue in the wake of a resurfaced clip of now-Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance criticizing some prominent Democrats as \u201cchildless cat ladies.\u201d <\/p>\n
Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019 and has written about his journey to joining the Catholic Church, also sent a series of emails that called Democratic leaders \u201cchildless sociopaths\u201d who \u201cdon\u2019t have a direct stake in this country.\u201d <\/p>\n
Pope Francis, 87, who is in Indonesia, the world\u2019s most populous Muslim country, made his remarks to political leaders as part of a 12-day tour of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. He said, \u201cYou\u2019re an example for everyone, for all the countries that maybe, and this might sound funny, these families prefer to have a cat or a little dog instead of a child.\u201d <\/p>\n
President Joko \u201cJokowi\u201d Widodo laughed at the remark with Francis turning to him and saying, \u201cit\u2019s true, isn\u2019t it?\u201d <\/p>\n
Francis has in the past criticized couples who choose to have pets rather than children, saying this \u201ctakes away our humanity.\u201d <\/p>\n
He has lamented low birth rates in Europe, particularly on his doorstep in Italy, and has backed plans by three government led by Giorgia Meloni to reverse the trend. <\/p>\n
While US President Donald Trump\u2019s running mate and Francis may agree on the importance of having children, the pope\u2019s approach is at odds with Trumpism when it comes to migrants and climate change. <\/p>\n
In 2016, Francis described then presidential candidate Trump\u2019s plan to build a wall to stop migrants the US-Mexico border as \u201cnot Christian.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Pope Francis has repeated his divisive comments that in some countries people prefer having pets to children, a message that has struck a chord with many conservatives around the world. The idea has re-entered the American political dialogue in the wake of a resurfaced clip of now-Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance criticizing some prominent Democrats as <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}