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Catholic World News News Feature

Embryos are human beings, Pope insists February 27, 2006

Human embryos deserve the same protection as all other human beings, Pope Benedict XVI told an audience of scholars on February 27.

"The love of God does not distinguish between the newly-conceived infant still in its mother's womb, the baby, the youth, the grown adult or the elderly, because in each of them He sees the sign of His own image and likeness," the Holy Father said. He was speaking to participants in a conference on the human embryo, organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life.

The Vatican conference has drawn over 300 experts from around the world to discuss the status of the human embryo prior to implantation in the mother's womb. The Pope acknowledged that the topic is "fascinating but difficult," involving both scientific data and fundamental about the nature of the human person.

However, the Pope observed, the Bible gives clear guidance on the question, pointing to "the love of God toward all human beings, even before they take form in the mother's womb." God's love, the Pontiff continued, is not conditional, nor is it based on the personal traits of the individual. Every human person, regardless of condition or state in life, bears the image of God. "Human life is a good thing, always and definitively," he insisted.

The nature of life remains a "profound and impenetrable enigma," the Pope said. Science can continue to shed more light on that mystery, he continued, and even furnish stronger grounds for belief. The Holy Father observed that "those who love truth must be aware that research into such profound themes puts us in the position of seeing and almost touching the hand of God."

Nevertheless the Pontiff warned against the temptation toward scientific arrogance, and a tendency to reduce all issues to questions of experimental science. The human person must be seen as a whole, and recognized in his anthropological and spiritual dimensions as well, he said.

Pope Benedict was speaking to an international gathering that will last two days, giving theologians and scientists an opportunity to speak with lawmakers and philosophers about the status of the human embryo in the earliest stages of development. The discussion has a critical bearing on some controversial public issues, such as embryo research and introduction of the "morning-after" pill, since proponents of those measures argue that the human embryo is not a human being prior to implantation in the womb.

The Church teaches that human life begins at the moment of conception. That teaching was made explicit in Donum Vitae, a 1987 document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.