The Pontifical Academy for Life (www.academyforlife.va) will gather its Academicians on Feb. 20-21-22 for its 28th General Assembly. As part of the work of the Assembly, there will be an international online Workshop, on Feb. 20 and 21, entitled, “Converging on the Person. Emerging Technologies for the Common Good.”
The Workshop aims to address the topic of “emerging and converging technologies” (nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science, also known as NBICs), focusing on their interrelation and integration and their impact on the environment, health, and society as a whole. The Workshop aims to provide an update and insight into the challenges these technologies pose, especially from an ethical, legal, and public health perspective. It is essential to identify the values at stake, the positive perspectives, and also issues such as privacy, data management, the relationship between the individual and society, and the centrality of the person in
relation to the community, the environment, and health. This is a challenge to be taken up, to converge these technologies toward the good of man, the whole person, and the whole community
Pope Francis, in his Letter “Humana Communitas“, sent to the Presidency of the Pontifical Academy for Life in 2019, the 25th year since its founding, addressed this issue. Pope Francis wrote (par. 12): “Another area calling for study is that of the new technologies described as “emergent” and “convergent.” These include information and communication technologies, biotechnologies, nanotechnologies and robotics. Relying on results obtained from physics, genetics and neuroscience, as well as on increasingly powerful computing capabilities, profound interventions on living organisms are now possible. Even the human body is subject to interventions capable of modifying not only its functions and capabilities, but also its ways of relating on personal and societal levels, with the result that it is increasingly exposed to market forces. There is a pressing need, then, to understand these epochal changes and new frontiers in order to determine how to place them at
the service of the human person, while respecting and promoting the intrinsic dignity of all” (12).
The full program is available on the website
The Workshop will be held online via Zoom. Participation is free and simultaneous translation into Italian, English, Spanish and French will be provided. The online Workshop has garnered 350 registrations. There will be 120 on-site Academicians. The activities will take place in the Auditorium of the “Augustinianum,” (address: Via Paolo VI, 25 – Rome).
The activities of the Assembly of Academicians, on the afternoon of the 21st and the morning of the 22nd, will be conducted behind closed doors.
This Assembly will celebrate the Second Edition of the “Guardian of Life” Award. In 2021, it was awarded to the American Dale Recinella, a lay chaplain on Florida’s death row.
This 2023 edition will give the Award to Dr. Magdalen Awor, a nurse, a collaborator of the Association “Doctors with Africa-CUAMM” in Uganda. The Award will be given “in recognition of outstanding service on behalf of nascent life in some of the most deprived areas on the African continent.”
The Academicians of the Pontifical Academy for Life are divided into four groups: Ordinary and Honorary Academicians (appointed by the pope); Corresponding and Young Academicians (appointed by the Steering Committee). There are currently 160 Academicians.
For more information: [email protected] @PontAcadLife
