Pope Francis: “Never despise life”

“God is a ‘lover of life’, for this reason “we must say to all the men and women in the world: do not despise life!”. Pope Francis during the general audience in his catechesis on the Fifth Commandment: You shall not kill. The Pope continued: “We could say that all the evil done in the world is summarized in this: contempt for life”, so much so that “a contradictory approach allows the suppression of human life in the mother’s womb in the name of safeguarding other rights. But how can an act that suppresses innocent and helpless life in its blossoming be therapeutic, civil or simply human? (...) It can’t be done, it is not right to ‘take out’ a human being, however small, to solve a problem. It is like hiring a hitman to solve a problem”.

Francis then asked from where does all this come: “Violence and rejection of life is born from fear. In fact, acceptance of the other is a challenge to individualism.  Let us think, for example, when it is discovered that a nascent life is the bearer of disability, even serious.  In these dramatic circumstances, parents are in need of true support in order to face up to reality and overcome their understandable fears”.  “The only authentic measure for life – he concluded – is love, the love that God has for it.”