On May 27, 2025, Leo XIV appointed Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro as the new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Pegoraro, a bioethicist and physician, has served as chancellor of the Academy since 2011 and helped engineer its transformation under Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia from a defender of life into a post-Christian bioethics think tank. His promotion is a coronation for bioethical subversion.
Public Support for Assisted Suicide
In 2022, Pegoraro publicly justified assisted suicide as a “lesser evil” in secular legislation. While admitting that neither assisted suicide nor euthanasia represent the Catholic position, he nevertheless called for legalizing the former under certain conditions, an action flatly condemned by Evangelium Vitae, which declares assisted suicide “never excusable, even if requested by the person seeking assistance” (EV 65–66).
RELATED: Bishop Strickland: In the Battle Between Life and Death, the Time for Compromise is Over
Pegoraro proposes a legal framework for institutionalizing a mortal sin and now leads the Vatican body once created to prevent exactly that.
Institutionalized Betrayal of Evangelium Vitae
John Paul II’s landmark encyclical treated cooperation with assisted suicide as a grave injustice. Yet the Academy now promotes precisely what the encyclical condemned. The teaching is clear. The new regime is clearer: it doesn’t care.
A History of Subversion at the Academy
Pegoraro’s betrayal doesn’t end with assisted suicide. Under his chancellorship, the Academy has:
- Blurred the line between public health and Catholic morality, praising experimental COVID-19 vaccination (developed from aborted fetal cell lines) as a form of “communal salvation.”
- Hosted pro-abortion speakers and tolerated heterodox views within its own ranks.
- Retweeted articles calling for “rethinking” the Church’s condemnation of contraception.
- Contributed to a 2022 volume (Theological Ethics of Life) proposing pastoral “flexibility” on contraception and assisted reproductive technologies—effectively advocating the soft repeal of Humanae Vitae.
In short, Pegoraro’s Academy has not only ceased to defend life. It has become a laboratory for moral relativism.
Continue reading at Hiraeth In Exile