During World Youth Day last week in Lisbon, Portugal, Pope Francis sat down with participants for a three-course lunch, during which he urged them to ‘defend life’ both for preborn children and the elderly.
The lunch took place on August 4 and included 10 young Catholics from different countries, including a 17-year-old from the United States. Also at the lunch were Cardinal Manuel do Nascimento Clemente of Lisbon and Cardinal-designate Américo Aguiar, an auxilary bishop of Lisbon and executive secretary of the local organizing committee for World Youth Day 2023, according to Catholic News Service (CNS).
Clara Yacolca Farfan, 24 from Peru, told CNS, “Some of us asked for advice on how young people today can face some issues that are difficult, that are very talked about — we talked about euthanasia, abortion.” She said the pope told them to “defend life.”
“We know that there are people that go through very strong situations, but the pope invited us care for life, because it is sacred and to do it from wherever we are,” she said. “We don’t have to do big things; simply, if you work in politics, defend life in politics, in whatever job you have defend life in whatever your position is.”
Luis Cruz Duarte, 31, from Colombia said that Pope Francis also told them “not to leave grandparents on their own.”
Earlier this year, in a Hulu program called “The Pope: Answers,” Pope Francis said, “The problem of abortion should be addressed scientifically. Any embryology book shows us that a month after conception, the DNA is aligned, and all the organs are drawn. It is therefore not just a bunch of cells put together, but a systematized human life. So, the question that should be submitted when talking about the morality of this is: ‘Is it valid to eliminate a human life to solve a problem?’ You’d go to a doctor. So, is it valid to pay a hitman to eliminate a human life to solve a problem?”
He also noted, “This isn’t a math problem, but a human problem. A woman who has an abortion cannot be left alone, we should stay with her. She’s made that decision, she’s had an abortion. We shouldn’t send her to hell all of a sudden or isolate her, no. We should stay by her side. But we should call a spade a spade. Staying by her side is one thing, but justifying the act is something else.”
