Salome Zourabichvili, the fifth president of Georgia, has criticized a statement by the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, Shio III, regarding families in which, as he put it, “grave sin reigns”—for example, abortion. He claimed that such a “family will not be able to build any happiness” and is “doomed.”
Zourabichvili described these words as “merciless” and a “harsh sentence.”
“Is such a family doomed? Such merciless words, such a harsh sentence… Leaving no hope for either God’s infinite love or the salvation of man through faith???!!!” she wrote on social media.
On Family Purity Day, the new head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Shio III, stated in his sermon that happy families are those where children are born every two to three years.
According to him, large families face fewer difficulties after the birth of their first children, and the state and society must pay more attention to demographic issues.
The Patriarch emphasized that without strengthening the institution of the family and improving the demographic situation, Georgia could face the threat of population decline and changes in the country’s demographic composition.
