Pope Francis: The World Needs ‘Fatherhood and Tenderness’
ROME — Pope Francis urged couples again on Saturday to consider adopting children, insisting that today’s world needs “fatherhood and tenderness” more than ever.
In a meeting in the Vatican with members of the Florence-based Agata Smeralda Project, which coordinates long-distance “adoption” to provide sustenance for children in need, the pontiff noted that he has “commended and encouraged spouses who open their hearts and homes to welcome a child who has no family.”
“Similarly, this sensitivity, this openness, this fatherhood and motherhood are also the basis of your commitment,” he continued. “In fact, those who choose to carry out a long-distance adoption are motivated by the desire to lend a hand to a boy or girl so that he or she feels loved and does not lack what is necessary.”
“Thank you so much, because you cooperate in spreading God’s tenderness, his fatherhood, which is the great gift that Jesus has given us, throughout the world,” he declared.
“There is so much need for fatherhood and tenderness! ‘Tenderness’ is a word thrown out, many times, from the dictionaries of everyday life,” he said, but the “real revolution in the world is made by those who work day by day, without making any noise, so that the little ones and the poor are no longer despised, discarded, and abandoned.”
“I have read that to date you have some 7,000 active long-distance adoptions, involving many supporters and many lay people, nuns and priests who work in the peripheries of the world,” Francis said. “I thank the Lord with you! And I appreciate the fact that you attribute all of this to his Providence.”
In early January, the pope lamented how many couples adopt pet animals instead of children and urged them to consider giving a home to the boys and girls who need one.
If you cannot have children, “think about adoption,” Francis said. “It is a risk, yes: 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.”
Adoption “is such a generous and beautiful, good attitude,” he said. “This kind of choice is among the highest forms of love, and of fatherhood and motherhood.”
“How many children in the world are waiting for someone to take care of them!” he continued. “And how many married couples want to be fathers and mothers but are unable to do so for biological reasons.”
“We should not be afraid to choose the path of adoption, to take the ‘risk’ of welcoming children,” he urged.
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