VATICAN - The Pope's appeal “to promote a culture which always respects human life; to provide favorable conditions and support networks for accepting and developing this culture”

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - “I urge the protagonists from politics, economics and social communications to do everything in their power to promote a culture which always respects human life, to provide favorable conditions and support networks for accepting and developing this culture”. This is the appeal that the Holy Father Benedict XVI issued Saturday afternoon, 27 November, in the Vatican Basilica, during the Celebration of First Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent, preceded by a Prayer Vigil for the unborn.
“The beginning of the Liturgical Year helps us to relive the expectation that God made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, that God who makes himself small, becomes a child” - said the Pope in his Homily - “and it speaks of the coming of a God near to us, who wanted to trace man's life from the beginning, to save him totally, fully. And so the mystery of the Incarnation of the Lord and the beginning of human life are intimately and harmoniously connected with each other within the one saving plan of God, the Lord of life of each and every one.”
The Holy Father said that “the human being is a subject capable of intentions and desires, self-conscious and free, unique and irreplaceable” that “has the right not to be treated as an object of possession or like something that can be manipulated at will, not to be reduced to a mere instrument for the benefit of others and their interests. The human being is a good in itself and should always seek his integral development. Love to all, then, if it is sincere, tends spontaneously to direct preferential attention to the weakest and poorest. Along this line we find the Church's concern for the unborn, the most fragile, the most threatened by the selfishness of adults and by the obscuring of conscience.”
Faced with some current cultural trends, science itself has acknowledged that the embryo in the womb is not “a pile of biological material, but a new creature, dynamic and wonderfully ordered, a new unique human being. So was Jesus in Mary's womb; so it was for all of us in our mothers' wombs.” “Unfortunately”, continued Benedict XVI, “even after birth, the lives of children continue to be exposed to abandonment, hunger, misery, sickness, abuse, violence and exploitation. The many violations of their rights that are committed in the world painfully wound the conscience of every person of good will. Before the sad landscape of the injustices committed against human life, before and after birth, I make the passionate appeal of Pope John Paul II to the responsibility of each and every one: 'Respect, protect, love and serve life, every human life! Only on this path will you find justice, development, true freedom, peace and happiness' (Enc. Evangelium vitae, 5).” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 29/11/2010)