Pope Francis Criticizes Abortion As ‘Horrific,’ Part Of ‘Throwaway Culture’

Since being elected pontiff in March 2013, Pope Francis has been named Time’s “man of the year,” made the cover of LGBT-interest magazine The Advocate, and become a darling of the liberal public: a December Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 72 percent of self-identified liberals said they approved of him, versus 57 percent of conservatives. But on Monday, the pope gave reason to liberals who have bitten back against that warm welcome in a speech calling abortion “horrific” and linking it to what he called a “throwaway culture” which poses a threat to the prospects of world peace.

Reuters reports that during a section of his annual “State of the World” address at the Vatican which dealt with the treatment of children around the world, the pope called it “horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day." The stridence of the comment might come as a surprise to those who remember his September statements to Italian Jesuit magazine Civiltà Cattolica, in which he said he thought the Catholic Church needed to move away from its “obsession” with abortion, contraception and gay marriage. “A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality,” he said then. “I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”

According to the Associated Press, Pope Francis made his comments on abortion in the same breath as a comment on world hunger. "We cannot be indifferent to those suffering from hunger, especially children, when we think of how much food is wasted every day in many parts of the world immersed in what I have often termed `the throwaway culture,'" he said before connecting that culture to lack of regard for unborn children. He also denounced the persecution of Christians -- whether through forced exile in the Middle East, bloodshed in Nigeria and Mali, or deprivation of the right to worship in Asian countries -- and called for better treatment of migrants, especially in Italy, where he alluded to conservative immigration laws in calling for Italians to “renew their praiseworthy commitment to solidarity."