ROME — Pope Francis has defended his choice of pro-abortion economist Mariana Mazzucato for the Pontifical Academy for Life, insisting Sunday that she will add some “humanity” to the Academy.

Women “know how to find the right path and move forward,” the pontiff told journalists aboard the papal plane returning from Bahrein to Rome in response to a question on women’s rights.

“Now I have put Mariana Mazzucato in the Pontifical Academy for Life. She is a great economist from the United States and I put her there to give a little humanity to it,” he added.

Mariana Mazzucato, professor at University College London, during a Bloomberg panel on day three of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, May 25, 2022. (Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“Women bring their own thing. They shouldn’t become like men. No, they are women, we need them,” the pope continued. “And a society that erases women from public life is a society that is impoverished. It is impoverished.”

“Equal rights, yes. But also equality of opportunity,” he said. “Equality to move forward, because otherwise we are impoverished.”

“There is this machismo,” Francis said. “I come from a land of male chauvinists. Argentines are male chauvinists, always. This is ugly, but then we go to our mothers who are the ones who solve the problems.”

“But this machismo kills humanity,” he said.

Last month, the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, also defended the appointment of Mazzucato to the Academy, declaring that her positions may be “pro-choice” but they are not “pro-abortion.”

Pope Francis has said that abortion is “murder” and has compared abortionists to paid assassins.