Preferring pets over children is selfish: Pope Francis

Paris: Pope Francis has described couples who prefer pets over children are selfish.

The Pope made these comments on Wednesday while speaking to a general audience regarding Saint Joseph.

A report in the Guardian quoted the Pope saying “Today … we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child. 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”.

Pet keeping was “a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity”, he said.

“Civilisation grows old without humanity because we lose the richness of fatherhood and motherhood, and it is the country that suffers,” Pope said.

Francis suggested that couples who cannot biologically have children should consider adoption.

How many children in the world are waiting for someone to take care of them," Francis said. "Having a child is always a risk, either naturally or by adoption. But it is riskier not to have them. It is riskier to deny fatherhood, or to deny motherhood, be it real or spiritual."

Previously the Pope has spoken of what he called a “demographic winter”, or falling birthrates in the developed world, "we see that people do not want to have children, or just one and no more," he had said.

In 2014, he said that having pets instead of children was "another phenomenon of cultural degradation", and that emotional relationship with pets was "easier" than the "complex" relationship between parents and children. (UNI)