(November 29, 2010) Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday reiterated the Catholic Church’s
teaching that life, once conceived, "must be protected with the greatest care."
His exhortation came during a Vigil for All Nascent Human Life prior to presiding
over Vespers on the eve of the first Sunday of Advent in St. Peter's Basilica. He
had invited all parishes, communities, movements and associations of the world to
join in the initiative. In his homily at the vigil, the Pope said that “experience
and right reason prove that that the human being is a subject capable of understanding
and willing, self-conscious and free, unrepeatable and irreplaceable, the meeting
point of all terrestrial realities, that demands to be recognized as a value in himself
and merits always being welcomed with respect and love." "He has the right not to
be treated as an object to be possessed or as a thing that can be manipulated at will,
not to be reduced to a pure instrument for others' advantage and interests.” Furthermore,
the Pontiff observed, "love toward all, if it is sincere, tends to become preferential
attention for the weakest and the poorest." Reflecting on life in the womb, the Holy
Father said that science itself has shown how autonomous the embryo is, how it interacts
with the mother and develops in a coordinated and complex way. “It's not an accumulation
of biological material, but a new living being, dynamic and marvellously ordered,
a new individual of the human species,” he said. He thus urged politicians, economic
leaders and the media to promote a culture that respects life, decrying the “cultural
tendencies” that seek to undermine it. “Unfortunately, even after birth the life
of children continue to be exposed to abandonment, hunger, misery, sickness, abuse,
violence and exploitation,” the Holy Father lamented.