Mariana Mazzucato, an economist appointed to the academy in October 2022, delivered a 15-minute intervention on 16 February at the Pontifical Patristic Institute Augustinianum, where the academy’s plenary assembly was held from 16 to 17 February.
The meeting was structured around four plenary sessions: the first examined key questions; the second, in which Mazzucato took part, was devoted to “Fundamental Ethical Principles”; the third, on 17 February, was titled “A Comparison of Approaches”; and the fourth considered “Perspectives”.
Proceedings began at 8am on the Monday, following registration and welcoming addresses. Participants paused for a coffee break at 10.40am before moving at 11am to the Apostolic Palace for a papal audience at noon. After the audience, Mazzucato was the first speaker to address the assembly as the second plenary session commenced.
During the audience, the Pope thanked members for choosing “Healthcare for All: Sustainability and Equity” as the theme of the meeting. His Holiness described the subject as important both for its practical relevance and symbolic meaning in a world marked by armed conflict and heavy investment in military production.
“I greatly appreciate the theme you have selected for this year’s meeting: Healthcare for All: Sustainability and Equity,” he said. “This topic is very important, both for its relevance and for its symbolic meaning. Indeed, in a world scarred by conflicts, which consume enormous economic, technological and organisational resources in the production of arms and other types of military equipment, it has never been more important to dedicate time, people and expertise to safeguarding life and health.”
Quoting Pope Francis’s 2016 address to Doctors with Africa – CUAMM, he reiterated that health “is not a consumer good, but a universal right which means that access to healthcare services cannot be a privilege”, and thanked the academy for its choice of theme.
The Pope also referred to the concept of “One Health”, describing it as a basis for a global, multidisciplinary and integrated approach to health questions. He emphasised the environmental dimension of healthcare and the interdependence of different forms of life, citing Laudato Si’ and its assertion that all people are linked by unseen bonds and form a kind of universal family. He connected this approach to the academy’s longstanding interest in global bioethics.
He warned that the principle of the common good risked becoming abstract if not rooted in relationships between people and bonds within society. A democratic culture, he said, must unite efficiency, solidarity and justice, and rediscover a fundamental attitude of care that recognises the vulnerability shared by all human beings. Only in this way, he added, could more effective and sustainable healthcare systems be developed and trust restored in medicine and healthcare professionals amid misinformation and scepticism.
After the papal audience and the break, Mazzucato was the first to address the theme of “Fundamental Ethical Principles”. While her speech has not yet been archived nor a transcript released, her participation in the session drew renewed attention to the controversy surrounding her appointment to the academy.
She has previously made public comments supportive of abortion rights on social media in June 2022 after the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the 1973 decision that had legalised abortion nationwide. Responding to remarks by a liberal commentator critical of Christian opposition to abortion, Mazzucato wrote “so good!” on Twitter.
Her appointment to the academy later that year prompted criticism from pro-life activists and from the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC), which said it was inappropriate for someone who had publicly expressed pro-choice views to serve on a Vatican body tasked with promoting the Church’s moral teaching on life issues.
In 2024, speaking to Catholic Herald journalist Michael Haynes, Mazzucato said: “I’m an academic, I’m an economist, I’ve never written an op-ed, a blog, a journal article or a book that has had even the word ‘abortion’ or ‘religion’ in it.” She said that she had once retweeted a cartoon image which she believed illustrated hypocrisy in abortion debates and expressed regret that journalists focused on that rather than on the academy’s work.
“The fact that a retweet in an academic conference like this is highlighted by a journalist who should be interacting with what we’ve just said, and what our expertise is, and what we will be talking about in this conference; I find that sad,” she said at the time.
She added that globally around 4.5 billion people lack full access to essential health services, more than 2 billion people do not have safely managed water, and that one child under five dies every 80 seconds from diseases linked to polluted water. She criticised what she described as a lack of curiosity about how economists and other experts might contribute to solving such problems.
In the same press conference, the president of the academy at the time, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, responded to criticism of his own views on issues including contraception by saying that the academy’s role was to promote academic reflection and discussion.
While the archbishop said that the presence of a single economist with differing views should not be a stumbling block to academic freedom within the Vatican, the question remains whether an institution founded to defend the inviolability of human life can coherently sustain a member whose public comments have raised concern among pro-life observers.
Since Archbishop Paglia’s presidency, the Pontifical Academy for Life has faced internal debate, particularly following the publication in 2022 of Theological Ethics of Life: Scripture, Tradition, Practical Challenges, a volume drawn from an earlier conference.
Several contributions proposed distinctions between enduring moral norms and their pastoral application in complex circumstances.
Arguments were advanced suggesting that artificial contraception might, in limited cases, be morally defensible when considered within concrete realities. Similar reasoning appeared in discussions of artificial reproduction.
The ambiguity has prompted continued debate about the academy’s mandate to uphold Catholic moral teaching on life.