Pope Francis held a private meeting to kickoff a two-day workshop with the Pontifical Academy for Life on the theme: “Equal Beginnings. But then? A global responsibility.”
The academy's president first expressed his gratitude to the Holy Father.
ARCHBISHOP VINCENZO PAGLIA
President, Pontifical Academy for Life
'Holy Father, thank you for this meeting, thank you for what you are going to say and for giving us your blessing. We assure you of our prayers for you.'
Afterwards, Pope Francis gave a moving speech reflecting on the body and life as a gift.
POPE FRANCIS
“The acceptance of our body as a gift from God is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home. Whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy a absolute power over creation. Learning to accept your body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology.”
He also spoke about appreciating the differences of human life and “difficult conditions that require special ethical wisdom and moral resistance, such as sexuality and generation, sickness and old age, insufficiency and disability, deprivation and exclusion, violence and war.”
POPE FRANCIS
“Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the unseen euthanasia of the elderly and the elderly deprived of care.”
He ended wishing the academy a good conference so the ethics of human life can find an appropriate place in a global anthropology, and not be confined to the limited questions of morality and law.
