Vatican releases new guidelines on human dignity, ‘urgent’ need to form consciences

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life. / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/CNA

Vatican City, Mar 25, 2025 / 10:45 am (CNA).

The Vatican on Tuesday launched new pastoral care guidelines for the protection and promotion of human life to mark the 30th anniversary of St. John Paul II’s encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae.

With the aim of upholding the Church’s teachings on the inalienable dignity of the human person, the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life released “Life Is Always a Good: Initiating Processes for a Pastoral Care of Human Life” on March 25 — the solemnity of the Annunciation — as an aid for bishops and dioceses worldwide.

The 40-page pastoral framework document highlights the urgent need to respond to Pope Francis’ call “to solidarity and fraternal love for the great human family” in a society that has “lost its ability to identify good and evil.”

“We urgently need to invest in the formation of consciences. Any confusion between good and evil creates a sense of emptiness and terrible suffering in personal and social life,” the document states.

The Vatican’s new guidelines were created to help local Churches to implement the principles outlined in the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2024 declaration Dignitas Infinita (“Infinite Dignity”), which condemns “grave and current violations of human dignity” such as abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia, human trafficking, and sexual abuse.

In its publication this week the family dicastery recommends parishes and dioceses develop formation initiatives and programs that emphasize the importance of each human person’s life — from its beginning until its end — “which prevails in and beyond every circumstance, state, or situation the person may ever encounter” (cf. Dignitas Infinita,1).

“In a time marked by extremely serious violations of human dignity, with many countries afflicted by wars and all sorts of violence — especially against women, children before and after birth, adolescents, people with disabilities, the elderly, the poor, and migrants — we must forge a genuine pastoral care of human life to put into practice,” dicastery prefect Cardinal Kevin Farrell wrote.

“I encourage every bishop, priest, religious man and woman, and layperson to read this pastoral framework and strive to develop an organic and structured pastoral care of human life, which can provide workers, educators, teachers, parents, young people, and children the right formation to respect the value of life,” Farrell wrote.

According to Bishop Dario Gervasi, adjunct secretary of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life, the pastoral framework is the result of an ongoing dialogue with bishops who “have always emphasized the urgency of a renewed commitment to safeguard and promote the life and dignity of every human being” during their visits to the Holy See.