Pope Francis sparked criticism and comparisons with Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance after commending Indonesians for continuing to have large families.

The pope has been touring southeastern Asia this week and made a stop in the cathedral in the Indonesian capital city of Jakarta on Wednesday to meet with outgoing President Joko Widodo and to address a crowd filled with nuns, clerics, lay Catholics, and others.

In 2020, America averaged just 1.6 births per woman, down significantly from an average of 3.6 births in the 1950s.

During his remarks, Pope Francis praised Indonesians for having families with "three, four, or five children." He called babies "the greatest richness that a nation can have" and slammed countries that effectively imposed "a law of death ... by limiting births."

The pontiff also lightheartedly insisted that Indonesia could serve as an "example" to other countries around the world, where some "families prefer to have a cat or a little dog instead of a child."

Pope Francis did not name any particular country that implicitly or overtly encourages pet ownership over parenting, though birth rates in Western countries have dropped sharply in recent decades. The United States, for instance, averaged just 1.6 births per woman in 2020, down significantly from an average of 3.6 births in the 1950s, the World Bank reported.

Additionally, fully 62% of Americans own at least one pet, and more than half of those pet owners believe their pets are as much a part of the family as human members, according to a Pew Research Poll published last year.

The pope has data on his side, but his comments nevertheless reminded some of the "childless cat ladies" comments previously made by Sen. Vance of Ohio.

In 2021, Vance, who is Catholic, told then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the U.S. was under the control of Democrats, big corporations, and "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too," per NPR.

In reporting on the pope's recent comments, The Hill published an article entitled "Pope Francis enters 'childless cat ladies' debate, praising Indonesians’ large families."

Other, less prominent individuals have made similar remarks on social media, the Daily Mail reported. A quick X search indicates that some users have indeed linked Pope Francis and Vance over their respective comments regarding children and cats, though X posts on the subject have remained almost completely obscure, receiving little or no interaction from other users.

The relevant clip of the pope's speech in Jakarta can be seen here.

Wednesday was not the first time Pope Francis spoke out against declining birth rates. At a conference in Rome back in May, he said, "Homes are filled with objects and emptied of children, becoming very sad places. There is no shortage of little dogs, cats, these are not lacking. There is a lack of children."

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has also sounded the alarm about low birth rates. In April, he tweeted that "if birth rates continue to plummet, human civilization will end."

Reuters noted that while Indonesian birth rates do surpass those of most Western countries, its birth rate is still declining.

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