breast-feeding
A mother and baby breast-feeding. Photo via Elena Stepanova / Shutterstock / RNS
While baptizing 33 babies in the Sistine Chapel on Jan. 11, Pope urged mothers to breast-feed their infants if they were hungry.
“Mothers, give your children milk — even now,” Francis said. “If they cry because they are hungry, breast-feed them, don’t worry.”
The pope departed from his prepared text, which included the phrase “give them milk,” and inserted the Italian term “allattateli,” which means “breast-feed them.”
The celebration took place to mark the day Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist in the waters of the Jordan River.
Francis also asked the parents gathered to remember the poor mothers around the world.
“Let us thank the Lord for the gift of milk, and we pray for those mothers — there are so many, unfortunately — who are not able to give their children food to eat,” he said.
Nursing Madonna (Madonna Lactans) Unknown artist/Creative Commons via Wikipedia
Jesus was breast-fed.
It’s a point often made by mothers who want to breast-feed in church, but know others would prefer that they retreat to the nursery, or find an out-of-the-way bench. Another point they make: Breast-feeding is part of God’s plan — so of all places, why not in church?
“Breasts were made to feed a baby,” said Misti Ryan, a devout Christian lactation consultant in Texas whose business has a cross in its logo.
A mother can breast-feed modestly and should be allowed to nurse in church if she wants to, said Ryan, who has nursed five children in her Baptist congregation. “The church needs to go there.”
Pope Francis did go there last month, in his much-noted comment to a journalist about a young mother and infant who had come to a recent general audience:
“She was shy and didn’t want to breast-feed in public, while the pope was passing,” Francis recalled. “I wish to say the same to humanity: Give people something to eat! That woman had milk to give to her child; we have enough food in the world to feed everyone.”