How should we respond to the advances of bioethics? Pope Francis responds with a call to defend life

The Pope Video for March has just been released with the prayer intention that Francis is entrusting to the entire Catholic Church through the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network. This month, the Holy Father addresses the new challenges that bioethics presents to the world today and, in the light of them, calls us to “continue to defend the dignity of all human life with prayer and action.”  The video has been made with the collaboration of The Pontifical Academy for Life.

How should we think about bioethics from a Christian perspective?

No one can deny the progress that bioethics has shown in recent decades. This relatively new discipline is dedicated, among other things, to orienting and reflecting on problematic situations that include financial, social, ecological, ethical, biomedical, and biotechnological issues. In the prayer intention for March, the Holy Father encourages us not to curb the advances of bioethics nor to hide ourselves from its fields of action and investigation.

Francis asks Christians to promote the defense of life through prayer—which continues to be the central focus of the intentions proposed each month by the Pontiff and promulgated by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network through The Pope Video and the Click To Pray app—but also through social action. Indeed, Christians have the duty of participating in public debate, making their voice heard with language and arguments that are appropriate and understandable in the current social context—as the Holy Father recently called to mind addressing the  Pontifical Academy for Life—but without watering down the contents, and always reiterating the need for integral human development.