On Religion: Pope Francis On Cats, Babies And Indonesia's Interfaith Life
(ANALYSIS) It was the kind of quote that, when said by the right person under the right conditions, would inspire bold headlines.
“Your country ... has families with three, four or five children,” Pope Francis told President Joko Widodo of Indonesia. “Keep it up, you’re an example for everyone, for all the countries that maybe ... these families prefer to have a cat or a little dog instead of a child.”
The pope’s words didn’t draw much flak — especially when compared with the media firestorm when critics resurrected a 2021 barb by then-U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance, an adult convert to Catholicism.
“We are effectively run in this country ... by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made,” Vance told Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
Maybe America could do more, he added, to “support more people who actually have kids.”
Vance, of course, is now in a hot spotlight as the GOP choice for vice president. The pro-natalist views of Pope Francis, meanwhile, drew warm praise in Indonesia, the world's largest Islamic nation.
Visiting an often tense land — with a population that is 87% Muslim and 3% Catholic — the pope did everything he could to praise the beliefs and traditions of his hosts. In that context, his pro-family views were welcomed.
The pope also praised Indonesia's more moderate approach to religious life, although the government has strengthened laws against blasphemy and apostasy. Some local officials in this vast and complex archipelago have been stricter than others when enforcing Shariah. Also, there have been occasional terrorism threats, including what officials decided was an attempted Islamic State group plot against Pope Francis.
In a speech to public officials and diplomats, the pope pressed for renewed interfaith dialogues, stressing that this would be an indispensable way of “countering extremism and intolerance, which through the distortion of religion attempt to impose their views by using deception and violence.”
In remarks that were both theological and political, Francis added: “The Catholic Church is at the service of the common good and wishes to strengthen cooperation with public institutions and other actors in civil society, but she never proselytizes, and always respects the faith of every person.”
The hope for peace, he added, is aided by the fact that Indonesia's 1945 Constitution “twice within a few lines” refers to “Almighty God and the need for his blessing to descend upon the nascent state of Indonesia.”
In one symbolic moment, Pope Francis offered a papal blessing after a dialogue with 100 young people from Scholas Occurrentes (“Culture of Encounter”), an international network he founded in 2013 to promote interfaith education and understanding.
“Here, we are from diverse religions, but we have only one God,” said Francis, in the video posted on the Vatican website.
This benediction, he added, was for “every one of you. ... In your own way, give thanks. The benediction is valid for all religions.”
After a moment of silence, he prayed: “May God bless each one of you. May He bless all your desires. May He bless your families. May He bless your present and bless also your future. Amen.”
While the pope bowed his head, he did not end with the sign of the cross and did not pray “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
According to media reports, some Indonesian television translators praised Pope Francis for omitting a reference to the Holy Trinity, a doctrine that Muslims reject as a violation of their faith's strict teachings on monotheism. For example, a prayer carved inside Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock proclaims: “Praise be to God who has not taken a son and who does not have any partner in dominion.”
Some Catholic conservatives criticized the benediction, noting that the catechism teaches that Catholic blessings of “persons, meals, objects and places” traditionally end with invocations of the “name of Jesus, usually while making the holy sign of the cross of Christ.”
Thus, Bishop Joseph Strickland — whom Francis ousted in 2023 as leader of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas — offered this online comment about the pope’s strategic benediction: “Without the Cross of Jesus Christ we are lost.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.