I mean, I’m not Catholic and, until now, have paid only a passing attention to the new head of the Catholic church, but even the biggest heathen can’t ignore or deny the dopeness that is Pope Francis. The Time magazine story naming him Man of the Year made this abundantly clear when it laid out all the incredible ways he’s reached out to the poor, convicts, the young, the afflicted, women and gays. Plus, he turned down the Papal Mercedes and chose to push a used 1984 Renault, which, in my book totally makes him a man of the people. But news that The Pope is encouraging mothers to breastfeed their babies in public just might make me stop in my nearest Catholic church for a service or two.
In an interview with The Vatican Insider’s La Stampa, Pope Francis recounts how he encouraged a woman waiting to see him with a crying, hungry baby in her arms to feed her kid:
There are so many children that cry because they are hungry. At the Wednesday General Audience the other day there was a young mother behind one of the barriers with a baby that was just a few months old. The child was crying its eyes out as I came past.
The mother was caressing it. I said to her: “Madam, I think the child’s hungry.”
“Yes, it’s probably time…,” she replied.
“Please give it something to eat!” I said.
She was shy and didn’t want to breast-feed in public, while the pope was passing. 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.
New York Times Motherlode columnist KJ Dell’Antonia questions whether the pope’s message is about breastfeeding or hunger or both, but goes on to note that The Pope was photographed kissing an infant while another mother breastfed her baby right next to them, and didn’t seem at all bothered by it. His thoughts on breastfeeding fall right in line, the column notes, with the belief that “the virgin’s nursing breast, the lactating virgin, was the primary symbol of God’s love for humanity.”
Honestly, I wish there was this level of deep thinking in my own Baptist church when my daughters were babies and I was breastfeeding. On Sundays when I knew I’d be sitting in a church pew, I’d go out of my way to feed my daughters just before we walked in so that their bellies would be full for a good part of the service, and then I’d be all anxious when they’d start fidgeting and working themselves up into the “I’m hungry and I want some ninny” cry. If service was particularly long, I’d have to excuse myself and find a quiet place to breastfeed my children because I got the distinct impression that nursing my children in the sanctuary would incur the wrath of the good deaconesses and church ladies who were so very modest that they handed out handkerchiefs to any women who sat in the front pews in skirts and with bare knees.
I took that edict so seriously that even on the day that I buried my mother, I chose to leave her eulogy to feed my baby, who was in the vestibule crying up a hot storm. She was hungry. My girlfriend Caryl couldn’t soothe her. My ninny could. So all the beautiful words the pastor said about my mother, all the comforting words he had for those of us who loved her most, I missed because I was out in the lobby, breastfeeding my child.
To this day, I regret I made that choice. I should have stayed right there on that front pew, next to my daddy and my brother, with my baby in my arms, a young mom nursing her child as she said her final goodbyes to her own mother—strong and firm in my belief that when it comes to feeding hungry babies, your squeamishness, your comfort, truly comes a distant second to my kid’s need to eat.
I’m not sure that Pope Francis holds any sway over the Baptist church or heathens or anyone who falls in between. But I do know that I’m digging that dude—for his stance on homosexuality, abortion, poverty and now, a mother’s right to feed her baby on demand, wherever our children demand it. Go ‘head, Pope Francis.
{Editor’s Note: That delicious artwork accompanying this post is called “Gladys and Elizabeth”—one in a series of pieces in artist Kate Hansen‘s Madonna and Child project.}
