Pope Leo XIV asks a science at the service of human truth and dignity

Pope Leo XIV sent a message to the participants in the III International Congress of Bioethics on the topic.

The Pontiff sent them “their cordial and encouraging greeting”, expressing “a living appreciation for the initiative”, which took place on May 30 and 31 in the Pontifical Institute Augustinianum of Rome.

Pope Leo XIV also stressed his desire that Congress’s activities “can favor increasingly authentically human and respectful science approaches of the person’s integrity.”

He also encouraged them to persevere “with effort” in the study and in the application of scientific knowledge “to the service of truth and for the common good.”

Since its first edition in 2023, this event has been consolidated as a reference forum to discuss the essential bioethics issues. This year it reflected on the existence of truth at the crossroads between experimental and medical sciences, philosophy and theology.

The conference brought together about 400 researchers, scientists, doctors, philosophers and jurists around the world. Among them were specialists from the Catholic University of America (United States), the Kennedy Institute and the Pellegrino Institute from the University of Georgetown (United States).

In addition, universities from Argentina, Mexico, Poland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Kenya and the Republic of Congo, and other entities such as the Knights of Columbus (United States), Word On Fire (United States), Ethics & Public Policy Center (United States), fertilitas (Spain) and the International Federation of Catholic Physicians (FIAMC), among others.

Cardinal Eijk inaugural speech

The inaugural conference was given by Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, from the Netherlands, who showed how science and bioethics can be at the service of truth, provided that three fundamental principles are respected:

“To recognize that human reason is capable of knowing metaphysical truths; that man has, in any case, a relative autonomy; and recognize human life as an intrinsic value.”
The Spanish Juan Arana, an academic of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, presented a conference on how “the evolution of Western thought has tended to neglect the search for the great truths of philosophy in favor of the small truths of science.”

In this context, he warned that “we should strive to restore that lost bond.” He also insisted on the indispensable character of philosophy and metaphysics in the search for truth and dialogue with science.

Moral truth in bioethics

The Italian Stephan Kampowski, of the Juan Pablo II Pontifical Theological Institute, addressed the moral truth in Bioethics, explaining that “the new biotechnologies can create possibilities never seen before.

The first day two round tables were developed. First, the “difficult question of the genetic council” was reflected. The Spanish geneticist Teresa Perucho, the French surgeon Emmanuel Sapin and the neonatologist Robin Pierucci, of the United States, analyzed the criteria of a fair genetic advice: “How to accompany parents in a difficult announcement without betraying the doctor’s duty, made of compassion and respect for human life?”

The second round table discussed the issue of conscientious objection, thanks to the interventions of Grégor Puppinck, of the European Center for Law and Justice, and the Argentine Nicolás Lafferriere, of the Person and Family Bioethics Center.

Puppinck showed that “if the question of the right to conscientious objection is so debated, it is because personal consciousness is the last and true witness of truth and good.”

Lafferriere, meanwhile, citing the encyclical LifeHe explained that the rejection of participating in an unfair action is not only a moral duty, but also a fundamental human right.

The last day of the conference, on Saturday, May 31, Professor Emmanuel Sapin spoke about the “gender dysphoria”, showing that the sexual difference man and woman is an objective reality, with a preponderant role of hormones and brain in sexual identity.

The meeting concluded with a Jean-Marie Le Méné Conference, president of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, who presented the scientist’s mission according to The geneticist discoverer of the origin of Down syndrome And first president of the Pontifical Academy for Life: recognize “without shame that what he knows is microscopic compared to everything he does not know, and that he feels fascinated by the adventure of intelligence on the way to the intelligible.”