Assembly 2017 has begun
Vatican City, October 5, 2017 - The Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life began in the Aula Paolo VI (Hall Paul VI) in the Vatican; this Assembly is the number 33 of the series. By introducing the day Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has included the new internal organization of the Academy as part of the more general reform of the Roman Curia. Particularly he underlined that the link that the Academy has with the new Dicastero Lay People, Family and Life – and with the “Theological Institute John Paul II for the Family and Life” - "inserts the subject of life into the spine of anthropological reflection that is natural in the perspective of the family."
“It is very important for us to dialogue also with persons who does not share our same ideas or approaches, that because we think that having a good interlocutor is the only opportunity to improve the possibility of a more creative and useful reflection on subjects so important as family and life. My dream is to have an Academy that can be a place of creative reflection and a place in which a positive and innovative confrontation could be guided by the furrow of the truth.
Speaking after Archbishop Paglia, Mrs. Lopez Barahona of the Leadership Committee of the Pontifical Academy, stressed the importance of "this historic moment of change in the Pontifical Academy" to reiterate that "the right to life supports all others and must be protected so that it is not reflected negatively on the most vulnerable. The family is the right place to protect and to develop the right of the life ."
Following the work Msgr. Pierangelo Sequeri, head of the Pontifical Institute for Study on Marriage and Family, recalled the figure and the work of recently disappeared Cardinal Caffarra.
The work continued with the Pope's speech at Noon.
In the afternoon the Assembly comes alive with the speech of Archbishop Paglia on "Reconsidering Life in the Technological Era" and with two sessions on the subject of medically assisted reproduction and on the family theme.