Francis called government contraception programs a “law of death,” and says all religions are “a path to God”
By ITV staff
Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar kisses Pope Francis on the top of his head after a group photo at the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta, Sept. 5, 2024 (Eko Siswono Toyudho/BenarNews)
Pope Francis returned September 13 from his 45th pastoral trip abroad, a 12-day visit that took him from predominantly Muslim Indonesia to predominantly Christian Papua New Guinea, and from poverty-stricken Timor-Leste to super-affluent Singapore.
Among the Pope’s main themes, such as unity, respect for one’s culture, interreligious dialogue, and care for the poor and the environment, was the Pope’s insistent opposition to anti-natalist trends.
In Indonesia, he criticized government contraceptive campaigns aimed at easing poverty by saying, “Some people want to deal with this” by resorting to “a law of death, that is, limiting births, limiting the greatest wealth a nation has — new births.”
Francis returned to the theme when speaking of Timor-Leste to journalists in his September 13 in-flight press conference at the conclusion of the trip. Replying to The Straits Times journalist Pei Ting Wong’s question “What did you learn?” the Pope said, “You know, there’s always something to learn, because every person and country has different riches. That’s why fraternity in communication is so important. For example, in Timor-Leste, I saw many children, but in Singapore, not so many. Perhaps that’s something to learn… The future lies with children; consider this.”
The next day, September 14, Pope Francis’ sentiments were echoed by tech and communications billionaire Elon Musk, who reacted on his social media platform X to a September 11 Los Angeles Times article titled, “It’s almost shameful to want to have children.”
Musk, a father of 12, posted, “Extinctionists want a holocaust for all of humanity.”
“Each a different path to God”
The Pope’s determined pursuit of ecumenical dialog during his trip led to some controversial remarks at a gathering of Singaporean youth on September 13 when he said, “If we always say, ‘My religion is more important than yours’ or ‘My religion is true and yours is not,’ where will that lead us?”
“There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God,” Francis continued. “Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are each a different path to God.”
Francis doubled down on these statements 11 days later at an interreligious meeting in Paris organized by the ecumenism-driven Sant’Egidio Community, saying that the multi-faith group must be open to guidance “by the divine inspiration present in every faith” in order to establish peace in the world.
Is Pope Francis spouting heresy? Catholic author of the book What Pope Francis Really Said and former executive editor of the National Catholic Register Tom Hoopes commented a few days later, “Often, the ‘troubling’ things Pope Francis says are just paraphrases of the Catechism.”
Quoting paragraph #846 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says, “All salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body,” Hoopes went on to note, “What comes right before it and right after it are also important.”
Indeed, paragraph #843 says of other faiths, “… the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as ‘a preparation for the Gospel and given by Him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life.’”
And paragraph #847 teaches that ‘Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart and, moved by grace, try in their actions do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience — those too may achieve eternal salvation.’”
What can become obscured, however, is the very next paragraph in the Catechism, #848, which tells us: “Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”
And as theologian and writer Fr. Thomas Weinandy pointed out in a September 27 article in The Catholic Thing, failure to proclaim Jesus as the “singular” possessor of “the completeness of divine truth” threatens that evangelizing mission.
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