Facebook users seemed befuddled at a recent blog post from McBlog claiming that Pope Francis had compared “aborting babies with birth defects” to the Nazis’ eugenic efforts. The story was marked for fact checkers to investigate.
The blog post was taken from the New Zealand website Newshub which had posted a report from Reuters.
The statement came during a meeting with the Italian Family Association in Rome over the weekend.
“I have heard that it’s fashionable, or at least usual, that when in the first months of pregnancy they do studies to see if the child is healthy or has something, the first offer is: let’s send it away,” Pope Francis told members amidst an off-the-cuff harangue discussing the traditional family, according to reports.
“I say this with pain. In the last century the whole world was scandalized about what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today we do the same, but now with white gloves.”
These comments were subsequently confirmed by the Vatican.
Despite previous controversial statements from the pope, his stance on abortion remains in step with traditional Catholic teaching.
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