This Embassy hosted, on Thursday, April 26, 2023 at Palazzo Borromeo, the presentation of the new paper by the Scientific Council of the “Courtyard of the Gentiles”, entitled “Denatality and the culture of generativity – Against the demographic winter”. The publication follows the other on the theme “Economy, Demography, Democracy”.
After the welcome greetings by Ambassador Francesco Di Nitto, Card. Gianfranco Ravasi took the floor. He pointed out that the word that recurs most in the Old Testament, after the divine name Jahweh, is ben, “son”, a Hebrew word that derives from banah, “to build, to construct”. Thus establishing a link between home and family, as we can see in Psalm 127: “Unless the Lord builds (banah) the house, the builders labor in vain … Behold, the inheritance of the Lord are the children (ben), the fruit of the womb is his reward “. Then, he concluded by quoting a very evocative phrase from the Indian poet Tagore: ‘When a child is born, it is a sign that God is not yet tired of humanity’.
Then, the floor passed to some of the members of the Scientific Council who explained the third dimension with which they investigated the phenomenon and which is hard to find in the newspapers or among the public opinion when the subject of the demographic winter is discussed.
On the one hand, Prof. Emma Fattorini and Prof. Alessandro Rosina recalled how our country has had the lowest birth rate ever since 1861 and how, at the end of the demographic transition in all the most advanced countries, the number of children per woman has fallen below two, also due to the scarce family policies implemented. On the other hand, they stressed how today having children has become a choice that needs to be included in a community that supports it with a concrete and stable idea of the future. Prof. Eugenio Mazzarella, however, defined as a determining factor the growth of an individualism that tends to put career satisfaction and the recreational management of free time before the responsibility of building and managing a family.
Professor Giuliano Amato concluded by pointing out how the demographic problem has no political colour and how it requires everyone’s effort to find a change of course. His is still an optimistic feeling on the issue, he is convinced that the keys to restore young people’s perception of their role in the future do exist and one of them will certainly be the climate change emergency that will be perceived by the community as a beacon towards the assumption of general responsibility.
