Global population over 60 expected to double in next 11 years, and reach two billion by 2050
Published in The Irish Times
Elderly people, including former Pope Benedict, attended a gathering of the wise and wrinkled at the Vatican today, where Pope Francis denounced the neglect and abandonment of the old as “hidden euthanasia”.
During the festive event in St Peter’s Square, Francis addressed some 40,000 elderly people — grandfathers, grandmothers, widows and widowers.
The pope sought to underscore the importance of the old in society and he said homes for the elderly could not be allowed to become “prisons” where care took a back seat to business interests by those who run them.
