EVANGELIUM VITAE April 28, 2024

To the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, Men and Women Religious,

Lay Faithful, and all People of Good Will            

 on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life.

3. - NEW THREATS TO HUMAN LIFE

     In a special way, believers in Christ must defend and promote this right to Life, aware as they are of the wonderful truth recalled by the Second Vatican Council: "By his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every human being". This saving event reveals to humanity not only the boundless love of God who "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (Jn 3:16), but also the incomparable value of every human person.

     The Church, faithfully contemplating the mystery of the Redemption, acknowledges this value with ever new wonder.  She feels called to proclaim to the people of all times this "Gospel", the source of invincible hope and true joy for every period of history. The Gospel of God's love for man, the Gospel of the dignity of the person and the Gospel of life are a single and indivisible Gospel.

For this reason, man-living man-represents the primary and fundamental way for the Church.

     Every individual, precisely by reason of the mystery of the Word of God who was made flesh (cf. Jn 1:14), is entrusted to the maternal care of the Church. Therefore every threat to human dignity and life must necessarily be felt in the Church's very heart; it cannot but affect her at the core of her faith in the Redemptive Incarnation of the Son of God, and engage her in her mission of proclaiming the Gospel of life in all the world and to every creature (cf. Mk 16:15).

~IOANNES PAULUS PP. II, Regina Caeli Address.  Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, March 25

the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord, in the year 1995, the seventeenth of my Pontificate.