What Would Baby Jesus Eat?

In an interview with La Stampa, a daily Italian newspaper, Pope Francis seemed to endorse the idea of nursing in public. As he was asked about the problem of hunger, the pope recalled a woman he encountered with a crying, hungry baby:

“There are so many children that cry because they are hungry,” the pope said in the Sunday interview. “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.”

The pope is clearly making a point about feeding the world's hungry: We have the resources to do it, he's saying, so we should. But he's also got a more literal point: If your baby is hungry, you should go ahead and breast-feed, even in public, even if you're in the presence of the pope himself.

“So Francis is backing breast-feeding in public! That is sure to warm [the hearts] of pro-nursing feminists and maybe raise a few eyebrows among the traditional set,” wrote David Gibson of Religion News Service. But, he also notes that the pope’s sentiment rings true with religious tradition.

“The earliest symbol of God’s love for humanity was the infant Jesus at Mary’s breast,” Gibson wrote.