The following comments are from Giorgia Meloni’s keynote address to the International Organization for the Family’s World Congress of Families XIII conference in Verona, Italy, March 2019:
“I believe that the state should incentivize the natural family based on marriage.”
“I believe in a society where every choice has consequences, and you accept responsibility for them. I reject a society where every desire becomes a right, every whim becomes a right, where I have no responsibilities, I have only rights. I reject it. It’s wrong.”
“Is it right for a society to spend more energy and resources trying to find quick and easy ways to get rid of human life, rather than trying to encourage it? Is that normal? Is that civilized? Is it right that you, correctly, cannot rip a newborn puppy from the bosom of its mother but you can with a baby, the child of a desperate mother who sold it to two rich men?”
“Why do Italian courts take away legal custody from two married parents, the natural parents of a baby girl, saying they are too old to raise her at 52 and 54, taking away their natural daughter? But if two men over 50 go abroad and buy a child, that’s fine. Why?”
“Why if they told us that that the father of Eluana Englaro should be free to disconnect the plug that kept her alive, because nobody knows better than a parent what is best for their child, why did the same not apply to the parents of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans? Why is the winner always the one who wants to disconnect the plug? Why is the winner always death?”
“If the life of a sick child like Alfie Evans is defined as pointless, how long before they define as pointless the life of a disabled or elderly person? Or anyone who doesn’t correspond to the idea of a perfect consumer?”
“Why do we spend our time fighting all types of discrimination but we pretend not to see the greatest ongoing persecution, the genocide of the world’s Christians?”
“Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening?”
“There is a single answer to all these questions. Because it defines us. Because it is our identity. Because everything that defines us is now an enemy. For those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves. And so, they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity. I can’t define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother. No. I must be Citizen X, Gender X, Parent 1, Parent 2, I must be a number. Because when I am only a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators. The perfect consumer.”
“That’s the reason why we inspire so much fear. That’s why this [World Congress of Families] event inspires so much fear. Because we do not want to be numbers. We will defend the value of a human being. Every single human being. Because each of us has a unique genetic code that is unrepeatable. And, like it or not, that is sacred. We will defend it. We will defend God, country and family. Those things that disgust people so much. We will do it to defend our freedom because we will never be slaves and simple consumers at the mercy of financial speculators. That is our mission. That is why I came here today. Chesterton wrote more than a century ago, “Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.” That time has arrived. We are ready.”