“Italy, Europe, and the West are impoverishing their future” because of their declining birth rates, Pope Francis said in a May 12 address to a conference on “General States of Birth.”

The Pope sent a prepared message to the conference. He did not attend the meeting, as his health difficulties—attributed to a painful knee—have severely restricted him.

In his message the Pope said that the decline in birth rates shows the “poverty of those who discount the desire for happiness in their hearts.”