On 17 and 18 March 2026, the Alfonsiana Academy’s International Conference on Bioethics took place at the Alfonsiana Academy in Rome, entitled: The Prospects of Bioethics. Current Challenges and Future Prospects, which saw a large turnout that filled not only the main lecture theatre of the Pontifical Institute but also the adjoining lecture halls.
We begin with one of the presentations from the second day, in the session With a Different Voice: Extra-European and Ecumenical Bioethics, specifically the one dedicated to the particularities of Orthodox bioethics. ‘How can we better understand the existential link between liturgy and bioethics?’ asks Prof. A. Wodka (Alfonsiana Academy) in an interview with Prof. Sorin Bute (Valahia University of Târgoviste – Romania). The Orthodox moral theologian replies: ‘One could say that liturgy is the home of Orthodox ethics’.
Let us, then, allow ourselves to be enlightened by the liturgy itself as we revisit the two days during which some 200 conference participants and the entire academic community gathered to reflect on whether it is indeed true “that bioethics is destined for a slow but inexorable process of extinction”.
The conference, in fact, took place at the heart of Lent: a 40-day desert. The desert is a place of trial, but also of possibility. The number 40 marks the duration, in terms of days or years, of numerous biblical events united by the fact that they culminate in a better outcome than the unfavourable and undesirable condition at the outset. The contributions offered by the conference as a whole placed the current situation of bioethics precisely within this Lenten-style hermeneutical framework.
The fact that we are in a time of trial emerged right from the introduction to the proceedings by Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who did not limit himself to identifying the symptoms of the current crisis, but rather guided us in the effort to arrive at an aetiological diagnosis, as the only way to identify a treatment capable of restoring bioethics to full health.
The two lectiones magistrales that followed clarified the terms of the crisis and, above all, pointed out paths to follow in order to emerge from it with renewed vitality.
Prof. Henk ten Have (Duquesne University, Pittsburgh), whilst not shying away from describing the times in which we find ourselves as “apocalyptic” – marked on the one hand by “catastrophic predictions” (Laudato si’, 161) and, on the other, by the crisis affecting all the human sciences, did not fail to emphasise bioethics’ capacity for resilience, that is, its ability to adapt to the needs of a changing world. Thus, his response to the terrible question regarding the possible end of bioethics was: “Bioethics will not end, but be transformed”, a transformation that requires a change of perspective, a broadening of horizons, greater attention to history and a renewed relationship with reality.
In the second lectio magistralis, Prof. Maurizio P. Faggioni (Accademia Alfonsiana), skilfully guiding us through the theme of transhumanism, showed us a concrete way to embody these attitudes. The widespread alarmism in the face of changes that seem to be slipping out of our control was, so to speak, dispelled by the observation that, throughout history, the human being, the ‘animal rationale’, is poised between physis and techne, [since] the will to intervene in the psychophysical dimensions of one’s person is an integral part of the human vocation, as one has true dominion over one’s own life. With an unflinching gaze upon reality, Prof. Faggioni was thus able to prompt us to reflect calmly on the evident need to identify a ‘rule’ governing interventions in the psychophysical reality of humankind.
He did so by proposing two very different lines of reasoning, both of which demonstrate the extent to which bioethics’ capacity for resilience necessarily depends on bioethicists’ willingness to leave behind the frameworks, approaches and perspectives that have ‘for a long time’ shaped ethics’ view of life in the world. In the first scenario, he asked whether it is possible to imagine that essential human values, which have always been embodied in bodily reality as a natural form of humanity, might take on a new form made possible by artificial processes. In the second, he considered the possibility that technology might integrate into natural dynamics, developing them whilst, at the same time, respecting the essential values of the humanum.
It is a sort of prophetic appeal that has been addressed to bioethics by many voices: a word to be heeded, welcomed, and taken as a guide to overcome the “trial of the desert” and commit to the exercise of the ministry that calls upon it to participate, within history, in the delicate and precious task of forming consciences entrusted to the whole of moral theology.
A. Cardullo (www.alfonsiana.org)
(originale Italian)
