Pope rebukes ‘global moral crisis’ of indifference to children’s suffering

Elise Ann Allen/ Crux• February 5, 2025

Pope Francis has lamented how millions of children around the world each day endure war, poverty, abuse, exploitation, depression and a lack of hope for the future. He also criticised what all too often appears global indifference to such a calamitous reality.

The Holy Father’s comments came at the start of the week on 3 February, when the Pope hosted an International Summit on the Rights of the Child titled “Love them and protect them”.

The Pope also announced his intention to write a document, an apostolic letter or exhortation, dedicated to children. With this document, the Pope added, he hopes “to give continuity to this commitment [to children] and to promote it throughout the Church”.

Held in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the summit featured keynote speeches by Pope Francis and Vatican Secretary of State Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, as well as from the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, British Archbishop Paul Gallagher, among others.

It drew high-level participants from across the world, including former US Vice President and Nobel Peace Laureate Al Gore, Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, and a slew of government representatives from Italy, Gambia, Indonesia, Egypt and South Africa, as well as representatives of institutions such as the World Food Program, FIFA, Interpol and Mary’s Meals.

In his opening address, the Pope lamented that throughout the world children’s rights “are daily trampled upon and ignored”.

He noted that many children experience poverty, war, a lack of access to healthcare and education, as well as injustice and exploitation, and that even in wealthier countries, “little ones are not infrequently vulnerable and suffer from problems that we cannot underestimate”.

Pope Francis speaks to participants in the International Summit on the Rights of the Child inside the Clementine Hall of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Vatican City State, 3 February 2025. (Credit: Vatican Media, via Crux.)

Children across the world have to deal with various difficulties, the Pope said, and those in developed nations often experience anxiety and depression, and many are “drawn to forms of aggression or self-harm”.

“Moreover, a culture of efficiency looks upon childhood itself, like old age, as a ‘periphery’ of existence,” the Pope said, and noted that many young people struggle to find hope in themselves and their circumstances, calling this “sad and troubling”.

“What we have tragically seen almost every day in recent times, namely children dying beneath bombs, sacrificed to the idols of power, ideology, and nationalistic interests, is unacceptable,” he said, adding, “nothing is worth the life of a child”.

Pope Francis stressed: “To kill children is to deny the future,” and lamented that where war is absent, other problems such as drug- and gang-related violence are prevalent, as well as a destructive “pathological individualism”.

He voiced sadness that many children are mistreated and killed by those who ought to be protecting them, while others die as migrants at sea or in the desert while trying to obtain a better life and future, or they end up exploited.

“All these situations are different, but they raise the same question: How is it possible that a child’s life should end like this?” the Pope said, calling all of these situations “unacceptable”.

Francis cautioned against “becoming inured to this reality”, saying, “a childhood denied is a silent scream condemning the wrongness of the economic system, the criminal nature of wars, the lack of adequate medical care and schooling”.

He called the situation a “global moral crisis” and urged summit participants to not let these situations “become the new normal”.

The Pope condemned what he said was a general lack of mercy and compassion about the plight children face, noting that 40 million children throughout the world have been displaced by conflict, while around 100 million are homeless and others endure slavery in the forms of trafficking, child labor, abuse and compulsory marriages.

There are also millions of migrant children, including many who are alone, he said, noting that a significant number of children “live in limbo” because they were not registered at birth. Some 150 million children are in this situation, he said, meaning they are essentially “invisible” and lack education and healthcare.

“We can think of the young Rohingya children, who often struggle to get registered, or the ‘undocumented’ children at the border of the United States,” the Pope said.

These children, he added, are “those first victims of that exodus of despair and hope made by the thousands of people coming from the South towards the United States of America, and many others”.

This situation is nothing new, he said, pointing to the fact that many elderly people have experienced similar difficulties and tragedies during times of wars and conflicts of the past.

Hearing stories of past violence, injustice and exploitation, the Pope said, “serves to strengthen our ‘no’ to war, to the throwaway culture of waste and profit, in which everything is bought and sold without respect or care for life, especially when that life is small and defenceless”.

Pope Francis also reiterated his condemnation of the practice of abortion, saying, “In the name of this throwaway mentality, in which the human being becomes all-powerful, unborn life is sacrificed through the murderous practice of abortion.

“Abortion suppresses the life of children and cuts off the source of hope for the whole of society,” he said.

Participants at the summit participated in seven different panels throughout the day, which were dedicated to themes such as a child’s right to resources, education, food, healthcare and family, as well as their right to leisure and to live free from violence.

Pope Francis, who sat in on various panels throughout the daylong summit, voiced gratitude in his closing remarks to participants for their contributions, saying the halls of the apostolic palace had become an “observatory open to the reality of childhood throughout the world”.

Participants’ presence, experience and compassion, he added, “have given life to an observatory and above all a ‘laboratory’: in various themed groups you have developed proposals for the protection of children’s rights, considering them not as numbers but as faces”.

“All this gives glory to God, and we entrust it to Him, so that His Holy Spirit may make it fertile and fruitful,” he said.

Nevertheless, the Pope underscored the severity of the situation.

Childhood, he expressed, is “often wounded, exploited and denied”.

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Photo: Pope Francis leads vespers at St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican, 1 February 2025. (Photo by TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images.)