Pro-family research center the Ruth Institute praised one of the first statements of the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, delivered to diplomats on May 16. Leo told the assembled envoys:
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.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute, commented: “Pope Leo served as a missionary for a decade in Peru. He has seen first-hand the impact on the poor of anti-family policies driven by home-grown and foreign elites, in underdeveloped foreign countries,” she said.
“Elon Musk’s DOGE exposed the use of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to promote abortion, contraception and the trans agenda aimed at children in poor countries. All this in the name of ‘development.’”
Morse continued, “Like his namesake Pope Leo XIII, this pope reaffirmed a cornerstone of sane social policy: the family, not the atomized individual, is the building block of society. The family pre-dates the State by thousands of years, and states which try to deform or replace the family are dooming their citizens to misery:
- Demographic collapse across almost every continent, with whole nations headed toward extinction.
- The global abortion epidemic, which has claimed more than 1.75 billion innocent lives since 1980.
- The decline of marriage as an institution, with millions of adults accepting life without a spouse or children as normal, and whole generations suffering from the traumas that we now know come when parents casually divorce.
“Pope Leo 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 an economical solution for their fiscally-challenged 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 clinical depression. If the right to life itself is negotiable and can be waived to suit our convenience, what other rights can be secure?”
Morse concluded, “As the leading advocate for human dignity and the vulnerable in a world that has forgotten God and seems to be tiring of mankind, too, Pope Leo clearly has his work cut out for him. We offer him our warm support and our prayers.”
