Pope Francis will give the opening remarks for the General States of Birth initiative on May 14 at the Auditorium della Conciliazione, just outside the walls of Vatican City State.

The mainly online meetings organized by the Forum of Family Associations seek to address the 50 years of steady decline in births across Europe, and especially in Italy, and what can be done to reverse it.

Italy's national statistics institute predicts that the country will see a significant decline in births in the years immediately following the coronavirus pandemic.

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Speaking to members of the Forum of Family Associations on Saturday, Francis decried the "fashion" for prenatal testing of an unborn child's health with a view to aborting those that are sick or disabled.

He told the Forum this practice is "the murder of children...to get a peaceful life an innocent [person] is sent away..."

He went on to recall his horror when as a child he heard stories from his teacher about children "thrown from the mountain" if they were born with a malformation.

"Today we do the same thing," he said, before moving on to draw an analogy between the Nazi regime and today's expectation of physical and mental perfection.

"Last century, the whole world was scandalised by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves," he said.

The Nazi eugenics programmes saw hundreds of thousands of people forcibly sterilised and tens of thousands killed in an attempt to "clean" the chain of heredity of those with physical or cognitive disabilities.

Pope Francis then went on to urge families to accept children "as God gives them to us."

Throughout his papacy, Francis has often repeated the Church's consistently-held anti-abortion stance and integrated it into his condemnation of what he calls today's "throw-away culture."

In this respect he has frequently pointed out how the sick, the poor, the elderly and the unborn are considered unworthy of protection and dignity by a society that instead prizes individual ability.

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• Catholic News Agency
• Crux Now
• Reuters
• Los Angeles Times
• Image: Twitter