ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS TO PARTICIPANTS IN THE PLENARY ASSEMBLY OF THE PONTIFICAL ACADEMY FOR LIFE
Clementine Hall
[…]
It is necessary to undertake a careful discernment of the complex fundamental
differences present in human life: between man and woman, fatherhood and
motherhood, filiation and fraternity, various social factors and the different ages of
life. Then too, between all the difficult conditions and all the delicate or dangerous
situations that call for particular ethical wisdom and courageous moral resistance:
sexuality and the transmission of life, sickness and old age, limitation and disability,
poverty and exclusion, violence and war. “The defense of the unborn, for example,
needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of 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 who are already
born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged, the vulnerable infirm
and elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms
of slavery, and every form of rejection.” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 101).
[…]
