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CV NEWS FEED // Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis often employed strong language while reiterating Catholic Church teaching on abortion — at certain points stating that it is akin to “hiring a hitman.”
He had been pope for less than a year when, in September 2013, he addressed the Catholic Medical Association about the steep cost of “the culture of waste,” which is perpetuated at the expense of the most vulnerable.
“In a frail human being, each one of us is invited to recognize the face of the Lord, who in his human flesh experienced the indifference and solitude to which we so often condemn the poorest of the poor, whether in developing countries or in wealthy societies,” the pope said. “Every child who, rather than being born, is condemned unjustly to being aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who even before he was born, and then just after birth, experienced the world’s rejection.”
His pastoral response on forgiving the sin of abortion was also marked by an announcement in a 2016 apostolic letter. In November of that year, Pope Francis indefinitely extended the provision granting priests the faculty to forgive the sin of abortion in Confession.
“I wish to restate as firmly as I can that abortion is a grave sin, since it puts an end to an innocent life,” he wrote in the letter. “In the same way, however, I can and must state that there is no sin that God’s mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father. May every priest, therefore, be a guide, support and comfort to penitents on this journey of special reconciliation.”
In the following years of his pontificate, Pope Francis continued to speak candidly about the reality of abortion killing a human being.
In October 2018, Pope Francis compared having an abortion to “hiring a hitman to solve a problem,” as CNN reported at the time.
“But how can an act that suppresses innocent and defenseless budding human life be therapeutic, civil or simply human?” the pontiff said.
He also noted: “One cannot do this, it is not right to do away with a human being, albeit small, to solve a problem.”
On a flight in 2021, Pope Francis reiterated this statement while responding to a journalist’s question about pro-abortion politicians receiving the Eucharist.
“Abortion is more than an ‘issue.’ Abortion is murder,” the pope responded.
Leading up to the 2024 Untied States presidential election, once again responding to a journalist during a flight, Pope Francis reiterated this statement while providing advice for Catholics who must decide on which candidate to vote for.
“[S]cience says: at the month of conception there are all the organs of a human being,” he said. “All of them! Doing [an abortion] is killing a human being. You like the word or you don’t like… but it is killing.”
He also recalled Church teaching on abortion.
“The Church does not allow abortion because it kills. It is murder, it is killing. And [in] this we have to be clear,” he said.
A month later, Pope Francis spoke out when Belgium legalized abortion, again decrying it as akin to hiring a hitman.
“Doctors who do this are — allow me the word — hitmen. They are hitmen,” he stated during a press conference mid-flight back from Belgium to Rome. “And on this you cannot argue. You are killing a human life.”
In February 2024, Pope Francis spoke at the International Summit on Children’s Rights, especially speaking out against throwaway culture that treats children as objects that can be discarded.
“In the name of this throwaway mentality, in which the human being becomes all-powerful,” he said, “unborn life is sacrificed through the murderous practice of abortion.”
He stated, “Nothing is worth more than the life of a child.”