"Nowadays people don't want to raise their child in poverty," but Pope Francis had a different opinion, as The Guardian reported, "a society with a greedy generation, that doesn't want to surround itself with children, that considers them above all worrisome, a weight, a risk, is a depressed society."

Relative to Europe's top-'producing' nation – Azerbaijan – and its 18.3 births per 1,000 inhabitants, He may well be right but the Italians are in 'depressed' company along with Portugal, Greece, and Spain at the lower end of the EU spectrum.

As CBS News adds, "Nowadays people don't want to raise their child in poverty," Francesca said. "They want a good level, a good standard of life for their kids."

That's true across most of the developed world. The birth rate in North America, Russia and Europe is already below the replacement rate of about two children per couple. And in Italy, a quarter of all women have no children at all.