Pope Pius XII on Breastfeeding

The following is taken from Pope Pius XII’s address to the Women of Italian
Catholic Action, a group of midwives, October 26, 1941.

Mothers, your sensibility is greater and your love more tender. Therefore,
you will keep a vigilant eye upon your babies throughout their infancy,
watching over their growth and over the health of their little bodies, for
this is flesh of your flesh and the fruit of your womb.

Remember that your children are the adopted sons of God and especially
beloved of Christ. Remember that their angels look forever on the face of
the heavenly Father; and so you too, as you rear them, must be angels in a
like manner, in all your care and vigilance keeping your eyes fixed upon
heavenly. It is your task form the cradle to begin their education in soul
as well as in body; for if you do not educate them they will begin, for good
or ill, to educate themselves.

Many of the moral characteristics which you see in the youth or the man owe
their origin to the manner and circumstances of his first upbringing in
infancy. Purely organic habits contracted at that time may later prove a
serious obstacle to the spiritual life of the soul. And so you will make it
your special care in the treatment of your child to observe the
prescriptions of a perfect hygiene, so that when it comes to the use of
reason its bodily organs and faculties will be healthy and robust and free
from distorted tendencies.

This is the reason why, except where quite impossible, it is more desirable
that the mother should feed her child at her own breast. Who shall say what
mysterious influences are exerted upon the growth of that little creature by
the mother upon whom it depends entirely for its development.

Reprinted from L'Osservatore Romano, 24 May 1995.


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Ann Marie Henninger RN BSN IBCLC RLC
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