On Saturday, 30 May, before members of the Italian Science and Life Association, the Pope urged for “science to serve life“, stating that “the degree of progress of a civilisation is measured precisely by its capacity to protect life, especially in its most fragile phases, far more than by its technological advances“.
He compiled a list of “attacks on life”: “the plague of abortion“, “euthanasia“, the fact that we “allowed our brothers and sisters to die in boats in the Strait of Sicily“, “death at the workplace because minimum safety conditions are not respected“, “death because of malnutrition” and “terrorism, war and violence“.
The day before, the Pope received approximately twenty children between 2 and 14 years of age with their parents, behind closed doors. He had told a mother who had refused an abortion: “A problem can never ever be resolved by killing someone. That is a Mafia trait“.
On 15 November 2014, before Italian Catholic physicians, he expressed his opposition to abortion explaining that “it is not lawful to take a human life to resolve a problem“.
La Croix (Sébastien Maillard) 30/05/2015 – The Telegraph (Andrea Vogt) 31/05/2015