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I am deeply thankful to Pope Leo XIV for coming out of the gate with honest, blunt talk about the most troubling questions the human race now faces.

Speaking May 16 to diplomats assigned to the Holy See, Leo said:

“It is the responsibility of government leaders to work to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies.

“This can be achieved above all by investing in the family, founded upon the stable union between a man and a woman, ‘a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society.’

“In addition, no one is exempted from striving to ensure respect for the dignity of every person, especially the most frail and vulnerable, from the unborn to the elderly, from the sick to the unemployed, citizens and immigrants alike.”

Pro-Family Pope Leo

Pope Leo grew up on the South Side of Chicago, and he served as a missionary for a decade in Peru, where he also holds citizenship. So the Pope has seen firsthand the impact on the poor of anti-family policies, driven by homegrown and foreign elites, in underdeveloped foreign countries.

American citizens learned a lot about how destructive “reforms” are imposed from outside when Elon Musk’s DOGE exposed the use of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to promote abortion, contraception, and the promotion of gender ideology targeted at children in poor countries. All this in the name of “development.”

One of the last gasps of the Biden administration was to threaten impoverished Sierra Leone with cancelling more than $400 million in aid for things like rural electrification if that government didn’t repeal its protective laws against abortion.

Reiterating the teaching of Pope Leo XIII, from whom he took his name, this Pope reaffirmed a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching embraced by other faithful Christians and clear-minded observers: The family, not the atomised individual, is the building block of society. The family predates the state by thousands of years, and states that try to deform or replace the family are dooming their citizens to misery.

The Toxic Sexual Revolution and Its Consequences

The demographic collapse we’re seeing across the globe is just the most obvious and quantifiable measure of how toxic the ideology of the sexual revolution is proving to our species.

Other metrics include the global abortion epidemic, which has claimed more than 1.75 billion innocent lives since 1980, according to NumberofAbortions.com — a sobering site that includes a heartbreaking real-time ticker. The ubiquity of abortion, and its promotion by so many developed countries against the wishes of citizens in poor countries, is a massive global injustice. If the right to life itself is negotiable — if it can be waived to suit our sexual convenience — what other rights could ever be secure?

While divorce statistics have begun to stabilise in the U.S., the percentage of adults who are married and living with children is at its lowest in history, far worse than it was at the depths of the Great Depression. Children have a right to be raised by their own parents, and it’s tragic when that’s not possible. Marriage and the family exist primarily to provide secure, stable, loving environments for the next generation.

But the sexual revolution taught us that marriage is a game for adults to play, which they can quit if it becomes tiresome or unfulfilling. We soothe ourselves with the slogan that “children are resilient,” but the traumas and long-term suffering of the children of divorce paint a very different picture. Our lax divorce laws and casual attitudes toward divorce constitute a grave injustice against the children of our nation.

Centrality of Human Dignity

Pope Leo also strongly affirmed human dignity as the central criterion for judging every law and policy, especially as it affects “the most frail and vulnerable.” Doubtless, he had in mind disturbing new trends in Canada and Great Britain, whose governments are pushing mass euthanasia as a cost-saving measure for their financially strained health-care systems. A committee in Canada’s Parliament is promoting doctor-assisted suicide as an option for children, teens, and those who suffer from depression.

In a world that has forgotten God, and seems to be tiring of mankind, too, the world needs an advocate for human dignity, genuine justice, and the protection of the vulnerable. As the leader of the global Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV can be that advocate. He clearly has his work cut out for him. I offer him my warm support and my prayers.

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Originally published at The Ruth Institute and National Catholic Register. Image via Simone Risoluti/Vatican Media.