In an off-the-cuff talk on Saturday, Pope Francis compared the practice of aborting the disabled to Nazi ideology and reaffirmed that only the family founded on one man and one woman is the true image of God. Speaking to an Italian family association, the Pope said: “I’ve heard that it’s fashionable, or at least usual, that when in the first few months of pregnancy they do studies to see if the child is healthy or has something, the first proposal in such a case is, ‘Do we get rid of it?’”

This, he said, is “the murder of children…to get a peaceful life an innocent [person] is discarded”

Francis recalled that as a child he was horrified to hear stories from his teacher about children “thrown from the mountain” if they were born with malformations. “Today we do the same thing,” he said. “Last century, the whole world was scandalised by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves,” Francis said.

On the family, he noted that in modern society “one speaks of different types of family,” defining the term in different ways.

“Yes, it’s true that family is an analogous word, yes one can also say ‘the family of stars,’ ‘the family of trees,’ ‘the family of animals,’” he said, but stressed that “the family in the image of God is only one, that of man and woman…marriage is a wonderful sacrament.”