November 07, 2022
In a wide-ranging in-flight press conference on his return from Bahrain, Pope Francis fielded questions on women’s dignity, the war in Ukraine, the sexual abuse scandal, and the Church in Germany.
Discussing appointments of women to different Vatican positions, the Pope said, “And this is a revolution because women know how to find the right way, they know how to move forward. And now I have put Mariana Mazzucato in the Pontifical Academy for Life. She is a great economist from the United States, I put her there to give a little more humanity to it.”
On October 15, Pope Franics appointed Mazzucato, an Italian-American economist who teaches in London, as an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. According to its current statutes, promulgated in 2016, members are chosen “on the basis of their academic qualifications, proven professional integrity, professional expertise and faithful service in the defence and promotion of the right to life of every human person” (emphasis added).
After it became more widely known that Mazzucato is a supporter of abortion “rights,” the Pontifical Academy defended the appointment, as did its president, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.
Roberto Dell’Oro, another new appointment to the Pontifical Academy for Life, is also a supporter of abortion “rights”: he said on October 12 that the Supreme Court’s pro-life Dobbs decision is an attack on women’s liberty. Questions have been raised about the abortion stance of two other new members as well.
In tracing the history of the Church’s constant teaching on abortion, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Declaration on Procured Abortion, quoted a range of texts from the Didache (c. 100) to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The former taught, “You shall not kill by abortion the fruit of the womb and you shall not murder the infant already born”; the latter, “Life must be safeguarded with extreme care from conception; abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.”
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