John Daniel Davidson writes for the Federalist about a significant action from Pope Leo.
The iconic image of Pope Leo XIV blessing a severely disabled girl during his papal visit to France last week grabbed the world’s attention for a couple reasons. It was not only a profound manifestation of Christ’s love and compassion, but also a stinging condemnation of secular liberal European society, which increasingly has no use for such children.
The elevation and embrace of disabled people, the affirmation of their humanity, is about as countercultural as it gets in Europe today, and it was without question the overarching theme of the pope’s visit. At an open-air Mass in Paris, he chose six men and boys with Down Syndrome to be his altar servers — a clear rebuke to European states that are systematically eliminating people with Down Syndrome through prenatal genetic testing and abortion.
He openly condemned assisted suicide a month after France formally passed an “aid in dying” law, urging the French to reject the “false compassion” of euthanasia and abortion of the disabled. French President Emmanuel Macron pushed for the assisted suicide law and celebrated its passage last month. Leo rebuked him to his face in an official address at Macron’s residence. “It is impossible to regard causing death as something normal. What is legal is not necessarily moral,” he said. “The protection of the right to life constitutes the indispensable foundation of every other human right.”
These words and the convictions behind them stand in the starkest possible contrast to modern European society, which has embraced a utilitarian, neopagan view of the human person. According to this view, the dignity of the human person is not immutable but contingent. In practice that means some people’s lives aren’t worth living, which is just another way of saying some people aren’t fully human.
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