Paglia replaced as president of Pontifical Academy for Life
The Vatican announced May 27 the appointment of Msgr. Renzo Pegoraro as the new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, succeeding Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.
Pegoraro has served as the academy’s chancellor since 2011. While considered a respected bioethicist, Pegoraro has made some statements that raised concern among some Catholics, who say they suggest he believes the Church’s moral teaching on artificial contraception could be subject to change.
Ordained a priest for the Italian Diocese of Padua in 1989, Pegoraro earned a degree in medicine and surgery in the University of Padua in 1985. He went on to receive a licentiate in moral theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, with specialized training in bioethics from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart.
Pegoraro has taught nursing ethics at the Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital in Rome since 2010, and from 2010 to 2013 he was president of the European Association of Centers of Medical Ethics.
In an academy-issued statement, Msgr. Pegoraro expressed his thanks to Pope Leo XIV for his appointment as president, and paid tribute his predecessors in the role.
“The work done over these years alongside Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, and previously with Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula has been both fascinating and stimulating, in line with the operational and thematic directions of the late Pope Francis,” he said.
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The Pontifical Academy for Life was founded by Pope St. John Paul II as a Vatican-backed center of thought and study focused on promoting Catholic teaching on the dignity of human life, through the engagement of theologians, ethicists, and other experts who would study and provide “information [and] formation” on social problems relative to the “promotion and defense of life.”
Founded with pro-life French researcher Dr. Jerome Lejeune at its head, the academy functioned in its early years like a kind of pro-life think tank, organizing conferences, publishing guidance on moral issues, and seeing members use their papally-conferred platforms to give lectures and workshops on Catholic doctrine and biomedical issues.
Pegoraro’s own record on bioethical issues is a matter of disagreement among observers and experts close to the academy.
Some have praised Pegoraro for his defense of life during his tenure in the academy.
When a referendum to approve euthanasia was under discussion in Italy in 2022, he said in an interview that it was “unfortunate” that the country’s Constitutional Court had opened the door for the “so-called medically assisted suicide.”
“The Church reaffirms respect for every human life, reaffirms its no to suicide, therefore also to assisted suicide. Its position, its values and its moral principles remain in time and have been recalled several times by Pope Francis. Palliative care, assistance, no to obstinacy are one thing, and causing the death of a sick person or assisting in the suicide of a person are another thing,” he said.
In a different interview, Pegoraro said that the Church’s teaching on the matter was clear, and that even while it was necessary to “discuss laws that we know will differ from the Church’s morality,” “the Church always condemns assisted suicide, as it does with euthanasia.”
But on another ethical issues, contraception, the priest has raised some alarm bells.
In an 2022 interview, Pegoraro said that contracepting the marital act, might be permissible “in the case of a conflict between the need to avoid pregnancy for medical reasons and the preservation of a couple’s sex life.” That view would seem to argue directly against the Church’s judgment of artificial contraception as morally wrong, as articulated in the 1968 encyclical of Pope St. Paul VI, Humanae vitae.
Sources close to the academy told The Pillar that Pegoraro had enjoyed a very good reputation among orthodox Catholic theologians prior to the appointment of Archbishop Paglia as president of the academy, and said that it is unclear how to what extent he will steer the academy further into or away from the controversies that came to characterize the Paglia years.
Current and former officials and members expressed mixed opinions on Pegoraro’s appointment.
One described the priest as “very good, very solid. I have never seen problems with him. He usually just stuck with Church teaching.”
“Some members of the academy are iffy,” the member said, “but most members are still solid. Even under Paglia, the tune of the academy in general is still Catholic, there are still many serious Catholic scholars. And I expect it will get better in the near future,” the source said.
However, a former member of the academy described Pegoraro’s appointment to The Pillar as “not good news.”
“He’s in favor of changing Church’s teaching on life issues, especially contraception” the former member added.
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Pegoraro succeeds Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia at the helm of the academy. Paglia’s tenure started in 2016, a year in which Pope Francis overhauled the body, giving it a broader mission, building “a view to an authentic ‘human ecology,’ which may help to recover the original balance of Creation between the human person and the entire universe.”
At the same time, Pope Francis did away with lifetime terms for members, removed a requirement that members commit themselves to defending life in accord with Catholic doctrine.
Since then, the organization has been embroiled in several controversies regarding publications and statements from some members which seem to challenge Catholic doctrine on sexuality and bioethics.
After the academy removed the requirement for signing a declaration stating that members uphold the Church’s pro-life teachings in 2016 under Paglia, Pope Francis appointed a number of pro-abortion members, such as atheist economist Mariana Mazzucato in 2022.
In April 2023, Paglia addressed the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, giving a short speech as part of a debate on the theme “The Last Journey — Towards the end of life”.
Paglia explained that “personally [he] would not practice assisted suicide, but [he could] understand that legal mediation can constitute the greatest common good that is concretely possible in the conditions in which we find ourselves.”
Paglia came under scrutiny in 2022 following reports he diverted hundreds of thousands of euros in donations received by the Pontifical Council for the Family under his leadership.
Vatican officials told The Pillar that, in a May 2015 memo, Paglia claimed he had replaced the money he had diverted away from charitable purposes. But sources said that while 600,000 euros had been transferred into the relevant account, they came from new donations raised by the pontifical council, not from Paglia.
After initially refusing to comment, Paglia subsequently denied he had used charitable funds for personal expenses.
His personal assistant eventually told The Pillar via email that the archbishop “has instructed a lawyer based in the United States to initiate a lawsuit against your newspaper for the serious defamation represented by part of your writing.”
A lawsuit was not filed.
