Life
In accordance with the Church's Magisterium, the Dicastery aims at supporting and coordinating initiatives for responsible procreation and the protection of human life from conception to natural death, keeping in mind the needs of the person throughout all the different stages and conditions of life.
The Dicastery promotes and encourages organizations and associations that help women and families to welcome and cherish the gift of life, especially in the case of difficult pregnancies, and to prevent resorting to abortion. It also supports programs and initiatives of the particular Churches, Episcopal Conferences and Eastern Churches that aim at helping people involved with abortions.
It is also the Dicastery's duty to thoroughly examine the main ethical problems of biomedicine and laws related to human life, as well as the theories concerning life itself and the reality of humankind, even as regards changes in social life, in order to promote the person in his or her full and harmonious development.
In studying these subjects, the Dicastery proceeds with an interdisciplinary approach, in agreement with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and in collaboration with the Pontifical Academy for Life.
News
Hungary
The Ad Limina Visit of the Hungarian Bishops to the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life
The challenges are those of all European countries, especially of those that, in recent decades, have come out from behind the iron curtain and are faced with the transition from communism to ...
Uruguay
The Ad Limina Visit of the Bishops of a Latin American country that is facing a serious process of accelerated secularization
The challenges that the Uruguayan Church is called to face are not so different from those of most Western countries, but their influence on the society and its culture is so strong that Uruguay has ...
Pontifical Academy for Life
Pope Francis’s Message to the participants at the Meeting of the World Medical Association on end-of-life issues: “Fighting Pain and Loneliness”
“The categorical imperative is to never abandon the sick”. All are called to “give love in his or her own way—as a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, a brother or sister, a doctor or a nurse. But ...