“Today many countries need migrants,” Francis said while receiving the Scalabrinians in audience.
“Italy does not have children, it does not have children. The average age is 46.
“Italy needs migrants and must welcome them, accompany them, promote them and integrate them. We must tell this truth.”
The pope, whose birth name is Jorge Mario Bergoglio as he is descended from Italian immigrants to Argentina, defined migrants as “teachers of hope”.
“I am the son of migrants, and at home we always experienced that sense of going there to make America, to progress,” he said.
“They leave hoping to ‘find their daily bread elsewhere’, as St. John Battista Scalabrini said, and they do not give up, even when everything seems to be going against them.”
The government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has launched a number of measures to try to encourage Italians to have more kids and raise the country’s chronically low birthrate.
ANSA