Pope Francis Decries ‘Exaltation of Youth’ and ‘Contempt for Old Age’

ROME — Pope Francis warned Wednesday of a growing trend to treat elderly people as “waste material” to be discarded rather than as precious members of society.

In his weekly General Audience in the Vatican, the pope began a series of lectures on old age, noting how world demographics are shifting toward the elderly as people live longer and couples have fewer children.

This makes old age “one of the most urgent issues facing the human family at this time,” he said, returning to the topic of a “demographic winter.”

“There have never been so many of us in human history,” he said of the elderly. “The risk of being discarded is even more frequent: never have so many as now, been at risk of being discarded.”

“We all live in a present where children, young people, adults and the elderly coexist,” Francis said. “But the proportion has changed: longevity has become mass and, in large parts of the world, childhood is distributed in small doses.”

“The elderly are often seen as ‘a burden,’” he lamented. “In the dramatic first phase of the pandemic it was they who paid the highest price. They were already the weakest and most neglected group: we did not look at them too much when they were alive, we did not even see them die.”

An elderly priest is assisted as he prepares to enter Tokyo Dome to attend Mass by Pope Francis on November 25, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

“The dominant culture has as its sole model the young adult, i.e. a self-made individual who always remains young,” he said. “But is it true that youth contains the full meaning of life, while old age simply represents its emptying and loss?”

“The exaltation of youth as the only age worthy of embodying the human ideal, coupled with contempt for old age as frailty, decay, disability, has been the dominant image of twentieth-century totalitarianism,” he warned.

Do the elderly need “to apologize for their stubbornness in surviving at the expense of others?” he asked rhetorically. “Or can they be honored for the gifts they bring to everyone’s sense of life?”

Francis went on to note a negative trend in “developed cultures” to treat old age as insignificant, as “an age that has no special content to offer, nor meaning of its own to live.”

There are assisted living facilities and hospices, he observed, but no real projects to help the elderly live life to the full. This, he declared, manifests “a void of thought, imagination and creativity.”

“Underneath this thinking, what makes a vacuum is that the elderly, the elderly are waste material: in this culture of waste, the elderly are like waste material,” he stated.

“Youth is beautiful, but eternal youth is a very dangerous illusion. Being old is just as important — and beautiful — is equally important as being young,” he added.

The alliance between generations “is our lost gift and we have to get it back,” he urged. “It must be found, in this culture of waste and in this culture of productivity.”

Pope Francis blesses a disabled elderly woman during the weekly general audience in Paul VI hall on December 19, 2018 at the Vatican. ((VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images)

The pontiff did not blame this intergenerational breakdown on young people alone, observing that the elderly, too, have a responsibility to reach out to the young.

“The young must talk to the elderly, and the elderly to the young. And this bridge will be the transmission of wisdom in humanity,” he said.

“If grandparents fall back on their melancholies, young people will look even more to their smartphones,” he warned. “The screen may stay on, but life will die out before its time.”

“The old have resources of life already lived that they can call upon at any moment. Will they stand by and watch young people lose their vision, or will they accompany them by warming their dreams?” he asked.

“Old age is a gift for all stages of life. It is a gift of maturity, of wisdom,” he said. “The Word of God will help us discern the meaning and value of old age; may the Holy Spirit grant us too the dreams and visions we need.”

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