He decided not to go with his pre-prepared speech and speak from his heart during a meeting with the Forum delle Famiglie, an Italian lay movement representing Catholic families. He spoke of how some couples resort to pre-natal testing to see if their baby has any malformations or genetic problems, such as downs syndrome. ‘The first proposal in such a case is, “do we get rid of it?”‘ Francis said. ‘The murder of children. To have an easy life, they get rid of an innocent. ‘I say it with pain. Last century, the whole world was scandalised by what the Nazis did to purify the race.

‘Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves.’ He added: ‘Children should be accepted as they come, as God sends them, as God allows, even if at times they are sick.’ It is estimated that 400,000 people were forcibly sterilised under Nazi eugenics, while another 70,000 under the euthunasia program. In the same meeting, he also said that only heterosexual couples can form a ‘family.’ He said: ‘It is painful to say this today: People speak of varied families, of various kinds of family, but the family [as] man and woman in the image of God is the only one.’ In his stance against abortion, Pope Francis has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors.

However, he has previously been seen as more liberal than them, and in May it was reported that he told a gay man that his sexuality ‘didn’t matter’. Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor of clerical sexual abuse in Chile, was visiting the Pope in late April when they discussed his sexuality. The Pope reportedly told him: ‘It doesn’t matter. God made you like this. God loves you like this.’

Karabakh Today