The EWTN News portal reports that Archbishop Renzo Pegoraro, president of the so-called Pontifical Academy for Life, offered an overview of the activities of this conciliar body nearly a year into his appointment by the antipope Leo XIV. Pegoraro presented the academy as a center for “interdisciplinary dialogue” involving biologists, doctors, philosophers, theologians, and lawyers to address “new challenges” concerning human life, including artificial intelligence, end-of-life care, neuroscience, neonatal care, and disability ethics. Most revealingly, Pegoraro openly admitted that since 2016 the academy no longer requires members to be Catholic or to sign a pro-life declaration, and now includes Jewish, Muslim, and Greek Orthodox members who merely “agree with basic values concerning human life.” The academy’s mission is framed entirely in the language of “human dignity” and the protection of life from “beginning to end” — a thoroughly naturalistic framework stripped of any reference to the supernatural end of man, the Kingship of Christ, or the authority of the true Church. This is not a Catholic institution engaged in defending the faith; it is a post-conciliar syncretic body that embodies every error condemned by the pre-1958 Magisterium, from religious indifferentism to the reduction of the Church’s mission to mere humanitarianism.
The Abolition of Catholic Identity: Religious Indifferentism Institutionalized
The most staggering admission in Pegoraro’s interview is the deliberate dismantling of the Catholic character of the academy. He stated plainly: “We realized the last 10 years, to have members that are not Catholic,” and confirmed the presence of “two Jewish members, one Muslim member, and two Greek Orthodox members.” These non-Catholics are admitted on the sole condition that they “confirm to agree with the basic values concerning human life” — a formulation so vague and naturalistic that it could accommodate virtually any worldview, including those fundamentally opposed to Catholic teaching on the supernatural order.
This is not an oversight or a minor administrative change. It is the institutionalization of the very heresy that Pope Pius IX condemned as religious indifferentism in the Syllabus of Errors: “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation” (Proposition 16), and “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ” (Proposition 17). The Catholic Church has always taught the dogma extra Ecclesiam nulla salus — outside the Church there is no salvation — and that the Catholic Church is the only true religion. As Pius IX declared in Proposition 18: “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church” — an error condemned in the strongest terms.
By admitting Jews who reject Christ as Messiah, Muslims who deny the Trinity and the Divinity of Our Lord, and Greek Orthodox who reject the Primacy of the Roman Pontiff, the conciliar sect demonstrates that it has abandoned the missionary mandate of Christ Himself: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). The purpose of Catholic institutions is not to find “common ground” with those who deny revealed truth but to convert them to the one true Faith. As Pope Leo XIII taught in Satis Cognitum, the Church is a visible society with defined doctrine, and those who are not united to her in faith and communion are not members of Christ’s body.
Pegoraro’s justification — that non-Catholics merely need to “agree with the basic values concerning human life” — reveals the complete capitulation to the spirit of the world. There are no “basic values concerning human life” that exist independently of revealed truth. The dignity of man is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God, his redemption by the Blood of Christ, and his supernatural end of eternal beatitude. Strip away these truths, and “human dignity” becomes a hollow slogan indistinguishable from secular humanism. This is precisely the error condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili sane exitu, where he rejected the proposition that “the dogmas which the Church proposes as revealed are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (Proposition 22).
The Naturalistic Reduction: “Human Dignity” Without Christ the King
Throughout the interview, Pegoraro frames the academy’s mission exclusively in terms of “human dignity” and the protection of “human life from beginning to end.” Not once does he mention God, the soul, the supernatural order, the sacraments, the Kingship of Christ, the authority of the Church, or the final judgment. This silence is not accidental — it is the defining characteristic of the post-conciliar apostasy.
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas establishing the Feast of Christ the King, declared with absolute clarity: “His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The Pontifical Academy for Life, by contrast, operates as if Christ has no kingship, no authority over nations, and no claim upon the consciences of men. Its language is the language of the United Nations, not the language of the Gospel.
Pius XI further warned: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” The academy’s entire framework — “interdisciplinary dialogue,” “ethical responsibilities,” “respect for the dignity of all human beings” — is built upon the removal of God and Jesus Christ from the public square. It is the practical application of the secularism that Pius XI identified as “the plague that poisons human society” and that he defined as beginning with “the denial of Christ the Lord’s reign over all nations.”
The academy’s focus on “new challenges” such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and robotics is presented as if these are merely technical problems requiring technical solutions. But the Catholic Church has always taught that the fundamental problems of humanity are moral and spiritual, rooted in original sin and requiring supernatural grace. The conciliar obsession with technological ethics divorced from moral theology and the supernatural order is itself a symptom of the modernist heresy condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici gregis, where he identified the modernist error as the reduction of religion to subjective experience and social utility rather than objective revealed truth.
The Pro-Life Betrayal: Abandonment of the Declaration Requirement
Pegoraro’s admission that prior to 2016, academy members were required to sign a pro-life declaration, and that this requirement has since been abolished, is a damning indictment of the conciliar sect’s trajectory. The very fact that such a declaration was once considered necessary reveals that even within the compromised structures of post-conciliarism, there was once a minimal acknowledgment that defending human life requires explicit Catholic commitment. The removal of this requirement signals the final capitulation to the spirit of accommodation and compromise.
This development must be understood in light of the broader pattern of the conciliar revolution. The antipope John Paul II — himself a heretic and apostate who kissed the Koran, prayed with animists at Assisi, and promoted the evolution of doctrine — established the Pontifical Academy for Life in 1994 as part of his project to create the appearance of Catholic engagement with bioethics while systematically undermining Catholic moral teaching. The academy has never issued a clear, authoritative condemnation of the intrinsic evils of contraception, in vitro fertilization, or euthanasia that binds the conscients of the faithful. Instead, it produces documents filled with “dialogue,” “discernment,” and “pastoral accompaniment” — the characteristic language of a church that has lost the courage to condemn sin.
The claim that members still “need to conform to Church teachings on matters of human dignity” is meaningless in practice, since the conciliar sect itself has abandoned or obscured virtually every definitive teaching of the pre-1958 Magisterium on moral questions. The documents of Vatican II — Dignitatis Humanae on religious liberty, Gaudium et Spes on the Church in the modern world — represent a rupture with the perennial Magisterium, as the sedevacantist position definitively demonstrates. When Pegoraro speaks of “Church teachings,” he refers not to the immutable doctrine of the true Church but to the shifting, contradictory pronouncements of a succession of antipopes who have systematically undermined the faith.
The Interdisciplinary Facade: Dialogue as Apostasy
Pegoraro’s celebration of “interdisciplinary dialogue involving biologists, doctors, but also philosophers, theologians, lawyers” is presented as a strength. In reality, it is a mechanism for the dilution and eventual destruction of Catholic truth. The Catholic Church has never needed the approval of secular scientists, philosophers, or lawyers to determine moral truth. Moral theology is founded on divine revelation and the natural law as interpreted by the authoritative Magisterium — not on the consensus of experts in various disciplines.
St. Pius X, in Lamentabili, condemned the proposition that “the Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Proposition 6). The conciliar model of “dialogue” inverts the proper order: instead of the Magisterium teaching and the faithful receiving, the academy treats all opinions as equally valid contributions to an ongoing conversation. This is the democratization of truth that Pius IX condemned when he rejected the proposition that “Roman pontiffs and ecumenical councils have wandered outside the limits of their powers, have usurped the rights of princes, and have even erred in defining matters of faith and morals” (Proposition 23 of the Syllabus).
The inclusion of non-Catholic members in a “Pontifical Academy” is not merely an administrative irregularity — it is a theological statement. It declares that the truths necessary for the protection of human life are accessible to natural reason alone and do not require the light of Catholic faith. This is the heresy of rationalism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus: “Human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself, and suffices, by its natural force, to secure the welfare of men and of nations” (Proposition 3). The Catholic teaching is precisely the opposite: that without the guidance of the Church and the supernatural virtue of faith, human reason is incapable of arriving at the full truth about man’s nature and destiny.
The Silence About the Supernatural: The Gravest Accusation
What is most conspicuously absent from Pegoraro’s entire presentation is any reference to the supernatural order. There is no mention of the soul, of original sin, of the necessity of baptism, of the sacraments, of the state of grace, of the final judgment, of heaven, hell, or purgatory. The “human life” that the academy claims to defend is, in its presentation, a purely biological phenomenon — a life that begins at conception and ends at natural death, with no reference to the eternal destiny of the person.
This silence is the gravest possible accusation against the conciliar sect. The Catholic Church exists for one purpose: to lead souls to eternal salvation through Jesus Christ. Every activity of the Church — her liturgy, her sacraments, her moral teaching, her social doctrine — is ordered toward this supernatural end. When an institution calling itself “Pontifical” and “Catholic” discusses “human dignity” and “the protection of life” without any reference to the supernatural order, it has ceased to function as a Catholic institution and has become merely another humanitarian organization — and a dishonest one at that, since it claims an authority it does not possess.
Pope Pius XI taught in Quas Primas: “The Church, established by Christ as a perfect society, demands for itself by a right belonging to it, which it cannot renounce, full freedom and independence from secular authority, and that in fulfilling the mission entrusted to it by God — to teach, govern, and lead all to eternal happiness, those who belong to the Kingdom of Christ — it cannot depend on anyone’s will.” The Pontifical Academy for Life, by contrast, depends entirely on the will of the antipope Leo IV and operates within a framework of secular humanism that Pius XI would have recognized as the very antithesis of the Church’s mission.
The New Statutes of Leo XIV: Consolidation of Apostasy
The article notes that Leo IV promulgated new statutes for the academy in March 2026, introducing the role of “supporters” who “contribute to the advancement of its academic activities” without being academics. This expansion of participation to non-academic “supporters” further dilutes whatever minimal Catholic character the institution might still claim. It is a transparent imitation of corporate and NGO structures, designed to create the appearance of broad-based support for positions that are, in reality, determined by the conciliar hierarchy.
No “statutes” promulgated by an antipope have any binding force in the Church of Christ. The sedevacantist position — supported by the authoritative teaching of St. Robert Bellarmine, who declared that “a Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” — recognizes that the occupants of the Vatican since John XXIII have lost their jurisdiction through manifest heresy. The “new statutes” of Leo IV are null and void, possessing no more authority than the bylaws of a private club.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in the Holy Place
The Pontifical Academy for Life, as presented by Archbishop Renzo Pegoraro, is not a Catholic institution. It is a post-conciliar structure that embodies the errors condemned by every pope from Pius IX to Pius XII: religious indifferentism, rationalism, naturalism, the democratization of truth, the removal of Christ the King from public life, and the reduction of the Church’s mission to secular humanitarianism. Its admission of non-Catholic members, its abandonment of the pro-life declaration requirement, its naturalistic language of “human dignity” stripped of supernatural content, and its framework of “interdisciplinary dialogue” all mark it as a fruit of the conciliar revolution — a revolution that the pre-1958 Magisterium consistently identified as the work of the enemies of the Church.
Pius IX warned in the Syllabus of Errors: “The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Proposition 80) — an error he condemned in the strongest terms. The Pontifical Academy for Life is precisely such a reconciliation with modernity — a surrender dressed in the language of engagement and dialogue. The faithful who wish to defend human life must look not to the compromised structures of the conciliar sect but to the immutable teaching of the true Church, which alone possesses the authority and the grace to protect both the natural and supernatural dignity of every human person from conception to eternal life.
Source:
Leader of Pontifical Academy for Life offers overview of academy a year into his presidency (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 21.05.2026