Prince Harry and Meghan Markle / EWTN Pro-Life Weekly
Washington D.C., Jul 20, 2021 / 19:01 pm (CNA).
An environmental charity recently awarded Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for limiting their family to two children.
In honor of World Population Day, British charity Population Matters presented the Duke and Duchess of Sussex with a “special award” for “choosing and publicly declaring their intention to limit their family to two.”
Among other things, the charity congratulated them for “helping to ensure a better future for their children, and providing a role model for other families.” The group called their family size limit an “enlightened decision,” and said the couple’s environmentally-friendly example showed that a “smaller family is also a happy family.”
The award came after Prince Harry revealed that he wanted two children “maximum!” in a 2019 British Vogue interview.
“I’ve always thought: This place is borrowed,” he said. “And, surely, being as intelligent as we all are, or as evolved as we all are supposed to be, we should be able to leave something better behind for the next generation.”
The royal couple have already reached their self-imposed limit with their two-year-old son Archie and one-month-old Lilabet Diana.
Catholic leaders challenge this idea, as EWTN Pro-Life Weekly reported on July 17. Pope St. John Paul II once stressed that an appreciation of the human person is necessary for interest in others – and the earth.
Catholic leaders suggest that welcoming children and embracing family contributes to the prosperity of the environment.
“If an appreciation of the value of a human person and of human life is lacking, we will also lose interest in others and in the earth itself,” Pope St. John Paul II taught in his 1990 message celebrating the World Day of Peace.
Adding to the late pontiff’s words, EWTN Pro-Life Weekly host Catherine Hadro said, “the answer is to care for both the environment and human life.”
“We are called to respect the earth our creator made,” she explained. “But we must also respect the human life our creator makes.”
Hadro also said that she would not be alive today if her grandmother had not been open to life. Her mother, she said, was the youngest of 13 children. She said she is also married today because her mother-in-law welcomed 10 children, the youngest of whom is her husband.
“No, not every couple is called to have or will be blessed with a large family,” she said. “But to shut off God’s plan for your family is to shut up the creator Himself.”
Instead of posing a threat to the world and closing doors, children infuse the world with beauty, she said.
“The more people there are, the more love there is and the more opportunities there are for this beautiful planet of ours,” she concluded.
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Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Vatican City, Apr 2, 2023 / 05:15 am (CNA).
On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis said Jesus voluntarily took on the pain and abandonment of his Passion and Crucifixion so that he could be with us in whatever sorrow or difficulty we might be experiencing.
Jesus “experienced abandonment in order not to leave us prey to despair, in order to stay at our side forever,” the pope said during Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square April 2.
“He did this for me, for you,” he said, “because whenever you or I or anyone else seems pinned to the wall — and we have seen someone pinned to the wall — you see someone lost in a blind alley, plunged into the abyss of abandonment, sucked into a whirlwind of ‘whys’ without answer, there can still be some hope…”
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Pope Francis presided over the Palm Sunday Mass one day after being discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital.
The pope was admitted to the hospital for three days beginning March 29 for treatment for a bronchitis infection, the Vatican said.
An estimated 60,000 people were at the papal Mass, according to the Vatican Gendarmes.
In his homily, Francis spoke in a soft voice as he emphasized that whatever situation of abandonment we find ourselves in, Jesus is at our side.
The pope also said that we will find Jesus in those who are abandoned, recalling the death in November last year of a homeless man from Germany, who was found under the colonnade of St. Peter‘s Square.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
Jesus “wants us to care for our brothers and sisters who resemble him most, those experiencing extreme suffering and solitude,” he said. “Today, brothers and sisters, there are entire peoples who are exploited and abandoned; the poor live on our streets and we look the other way, we turn around; there are migrants who are no longer faces but numbers; prisoners are disowned; people written off as problems.”
Pope Francis said these people are “Christs” for us: “People who are abandoned, invisible, hidden, discarded with white gloves,” such as the unborn, the isolated elderly, the forgotten sick, the abandoned disabled, and the lonely young.
“Jesus, in his abandonment, asks us to open our eyes and hearts to all who find themselves abandoned,” he said.
Pope Francis entered St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile April 2. He was driven to the central obelisk for the blessing of the palms and the proclamation of a reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew and the singing of Psalm 23.
Pope Francis presided over Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter’s Square on April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
The blessing followed the procession of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, and laypeople carrying palm fronds, olive branches, and the large weaved palms called “parmureli” to commemorate Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem. Pope Francis has not led the procession since 2019.
For the start of Mass, the pope was again driven in the popemobile from the obelisk to the altar in front of St. Peter’s Basilica.
Palm Sunday, also called Passion Sunday, marks the beginning of Holy Week, which will lead in to the sacred Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, and concludes with the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection beginning at the Easter Vigil.
On Palm Sunday, the Mass includes the reading of the Lord’s Passion from the Gospel of St. Matthew.
In his homily on April 2, Pope Francis focused on a line from the Gospel and repeated in the Psalm — Jesus’ cry of abandonment to the Father — “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
“‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ In the Bible, the word ‘forsake’ is powerful,” the pope said.
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis’ Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
He noted how one might feel forsaken “at moments of extreme pain: love that fails, or is rejected or betrayed; children who are rejected and aborted; situations of repudiation, the lot of widows and orphans; broken marriages, forms of social exclusion, injustice and oppression; the solitude of sickness.”
“In a word, in the drastic severing of the bonds that unite us to others,” he said. “There [Jesus] tells us this word: abandonment. Christ brought all of this to the cross; upon his shoulders, he bore the sins of the world. And at the supreme moment, Jesus, the only begotten, beloved Son of the Father, experienced a situation utterly alien to his very being: the abandonment, the distance of God.”
“But, why did it have to come to this? For us. There is no other answer: Us,” Francis underlined. “He became one of us to the very end, in order to be completely and definitively one with us.”
At the end of his homily, Pope Francis remained in silence for over two and a half minutes before the singing of the Creed.
Jesus, the pope said, “has endured the distance of abandonment in order to take up into his love every possible distance that we can feel. So that each of us might say: in my failings — each of you has fallen many times — and I can say in my failings, in my desolation, whenever I feel betrayed or I have betrayed someone, when I feel cast aside or I have cast aside others, or when I feel forsaken or have forsaken others, we can think that Jesus was abandoned, betrayed, cast aside.”
An estimated 60,000 people attended Pope Francis’ Mass for Palm Sunday April 2, 2023. Daniel Ibanez/CNA
In our failures, we can remember that Jesus is at our side, Pope Francis said. “When I feel lost and confused, when I feel that I can’t go on, he is with me, he is there. In the thousand fits of ‘why…?’ and with many ‘whys’ unanswered, he is there.”
At the conclusion of Mass, Pope Francis led the Angelus, a traditional prayer honoring Mary.
In a brief message before the prayer, he invited Catholics to live Holy Week “as the tradition of God’s holy faithful people teaches us, that is, accompanying the Lord Jesus with faith and love.”
“Let us learn from our Mother, the Virgin Mary,” he said. “She followed her Son with the closeness of her heart; she was one soul with him and, although she did not understand everything, together with him she surrendered herself fully to the will of God the Father.”
“May Our Lady help us to be close to Jesus present in the suffering, discarded, abandoned people. May Our Lady take us by the hand to Jesus present in these people,” he said. “To all, happy journey toward Easter.”
From the popemobile, Pope Francis greeted those gathered in the square and in the adjoining thoroughfare after the Mass.
The full text of Pope Francis’ homily for Palm Sunday 2023 can be read here.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, speaks during a presentation of the Let Pregnancy Centers Serve Act, which protects pregnancy care facilities, at a March 24, 2025, press conference in the U.S. Capit… […]
Oct. 13, 2017: Statue of Our Lady of Fatima at the Via Conciliazione in Rome, Italy on the 100th anniversary of the Marian apparition. / CNA
Washington D.C., May 12, 2021 / 06:05 am (CNA).
Children at Maine’s Catholic schools will participate in… […]
5 Comments
Barf…these two have disgraced the Royal family too many times to count. But not surprising coming from Harry, who after all, was raised with the perspective of being merely “the spare.”
We read that “Pope St. John Paul II once stressed that an appreciation of the human person is necessary for interest in others—and the earth,” and that “children infuse the world with beauty.”
A couple of points to ponder, all to suggest that framing these issues with wisdom and creativity would be not so far out of reach if Catholic academia had not indulged in its adolescent outburst of decapitated autonomy—the Land O’ Lakes Declaration. (But what else could these schools do, given the siren call of federal grants, and given their compromised middleman role between the banking industry and new generations of indentured servants under inflated student loans?)
Points to ponder:
FIRST, Humanae Vitae (1968) defends the right and obligation of parents, upon honest reflection, to figure out the number of children, more or less. The primacy of the family, rather than dictates from the Administrative State or its self-selected figureheads.
SECOND, in addition to the above quote, Pope St. John Paul II was also more nuanced in framing the challenges of the 21st Century. He called for (a) “important changes in established lifestyles, in order to limit the waste of environmental and human resources, thus enabling every individual and all the peoples of the earth to have a sufficient share of those resources” (Centesimus Annus, 1991, n. 54); but also, (b) “wealth” as “the possession of know-how, technology and skill,” and “[i]t is precisely the ability to foresee both the needs of others and the combinations of productive factors most adapted to satisfying those needs that constitutes another important source of wealth in modern society” (CA, n. 32).
THIRD, Pope St. John XXIII, “But whatever be the situation, we clearly affirm these problems should be posed and resolved in such a way that man does not have recourse to methods and means contrary to his dignity . . .” (Mater et Magistra, 1961, n. 191).
FOURTH, this brings us to the contraceptive cult versus The Theology of the Body, and to both “children who infuse the world with beauty,” and the personalized parental beauty of Natural Family Planning. All this in a world where the centrality of personal dignity and the family now are inundated by the consumer culture of abortion, euthanasia, redefined “marriage,” bread, circuses, ecological exploitation, exploitive/recreational sex, and denatured gender theory.
FIFTH, the numbers crunching is not simple-minded (Harry and Meghan—in all settings: 1 + 1 = 2!), especially now that the collapsing Western world is clocking-in at below the population replacement level.
Again, what might Catholic academia have contributed about solidarity and subsidiarity, both always together, and about incommensurate goods, if half a century ago it had not jumped in the lake?
By 
Barf…these two have disgraced the Royal family too many times to count. But not surprising coming from Harry, who after all, was raised with the perspective of being merely “the spare.”
Humans are our greatest renewable resource.
Enough already about these two narcissists and their enablers.
We read that “Pope St. John Paul II once stressed that an appreciation of the human person is necessary for interest in others—and the earth,” and that “children infuse the world with beauty.”
A couple of points to ponder, all to suggest that framing these issues with wisdom and creativity would be not so far out of reach if Catholic academia had not indulged in its adolescent outburst of decapitated autonomy—the Land O’ Lakes Declaration. (But what else could these schools do, given the siren call of federal grants, and given their compromised middleman role between the banking industry and new generations of indentured servants under inflated student loans?)
Points to ponder:
FIRST, Humanae Vitae (1968) defends the right and obligation of parents, upon honest reflection, to figure out the number of children, more or less. The primacy of the family, rather than dictates from the Administrative State or its self-selected figureheads.
SECOND, in addition to the above quote, Pope St. John Paul II was also more nuanced in framing the challenges of the 21st Century. He called for (a) “important changes in established lifestyles, in order to limit the waste of environmental and human resources, thus enabling every individual and all the peoples of the earth to have a sufficient share of those resources” (Centesimus Annus, 1991, n. 54); but also, (b) “wealth” as “the possession of know-how, technology and skill,” and “[i]t is precisely the ability to foresee both the needs of others and the combinations of productive factors most adapted to satisfying those needs that constitutes another important source of wealth in modern society” (CA, n. 32).
THIRD, Pope St. John XXIII, “But whatever be the situation, we clearly affirm these problems should be posed and resolved in such a way that man does not have recourse to methods and means contrary to his dignity . . .” (Mater et Magistra, 1961, n. 191).
FOURTH, this brings us to the contraceptive cult versus The Theology of the Body, and to both “children who infuse the world with beauty,” and the personalized parental beauty of Natural Family Planning. All this in a world where the centrality of personal dignity and the family now are inundated by the consumer culture of abortion, euthanasia, redefined “marriage,” bread, circuses, ecological exploitation, exploitive/recreational sex, and denatured gender theory.
FIFTH, the numbers crunching is not simple-minded (Harry and Meghan—in all settings: 1 + 1 = 2!), especially now that the collapsing Western world is clocking-in at below the population replacement level.
Again, what might Catholic academia have contributed about solidarity and subsidiarity, both always together, and about incommensurate goods, if half a century ago it had not jumped in the lake?
This award seems rather cruel since Prince Harry & his wife were in fact the parents of three children.
Prince William and his wife, Kate, have three children. To my knowledge, they haven’t instructed others to follow suit.