Pope names new members to Pontifical Academy for Life

By Vatican News staff writer

Pope Francis added 4 new Ordinary Acadamicians to the Pontifical Academy for Life on Friday.

Fr Paolo Benanti, T.O.R., is a professor of Moral Theology, Bioethics, and Neuro-ethics at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.

Sister Margarita Bofarull, R.S.C.J., serves as a professor of Moral Theology at the all’Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas in El Salvador.

Professor Gualtiero Walter Ricciardi directs the Department of Sciences of Women’s, Children’s, and Public Health at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, in Italy.

Professor Maria Chiara Carrozza is a professor of Industrial Engineering at the Normal School of Pisa, in Italy.

'Deepening commitment to Pope's guidelines'

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia and Msgr. Renzo Pegoraro, the president and chancellor, respectively, of the Pontifical Academy for Life, released a statement welcoming the Pope’s appointments.

“The new appointments of four Ordinary Academicians represent an important event for the entire Pontifical Academy for Life. Our commitment deepens, following the guidelines indicated by Pope Francis in the speeches he addressed to the Pontifical Academy for Life in recent years and in the definition of the 'strategic' objectives of work and study, contained in the 2019 Letter Humana Communitas.

“With Prof. Margarita Bofarull, former Correspondent Academician, reflection in the fields of moral theology and bioethics is strengthened. With Prof. Father Paolo Benanti, former Correspondent Academician and now Ordinary Academician, and with Prof. Maria Chiara Carrozza, the Academy acquires new skills on the topics of technologies and their implications in the ethical and health fields. With the appointment of Prof. Walter Ricciardi, the Pontifical Academy for Life is preparing itself for the next Assembly on the theme of public health in a global perspective in September. That is a topic of great importance both at a social and health level, and for that inescapable ethical reflection in the face of a world changed by Covid19, of women and men in search of meaning and hope for their lives.

“On behalf of all the Academicians, we express an heartfelt thanks to Pope Francis for the attention with which he looks at our work. And we reaffirm the commitment to bring that gospel-based prophetic inspiration and vocation to our world, in order to show the way for a new time.”