New Academy of Life: Bye-Bye John Paul II.

Pope Francis' Academy for Life, newly appointed on Tuesday, is more accommodating on subjects such as artificial contraception, in vitro fertilization, so called sexual orientation, homosexualism, passive euthanasia and other delicate topics, writes the Vaticanista Sandro Magister. According to him, those who take their inspiration from Saint John Paul II or Benedict XVI will not have - quote - "an easy life" with these changes.

For Magister the most emblematic new appointee is Father Maurizio Chiodi, who teaches moral theology in Bergamo, Italy. Chiodi is an open critic of Humanae Vitae, the encyclical of Paul VI that rejects artificial contraception, of John Paul II's encyclical Evangelium Vitae that opposes abortion and euthanasia, and of the instruction Donum Vitae that opposes in vitro fertilisation.

The Omaha gynecologist Thomas William Hilgers, the founder and director of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction, is one of those excluded from Pope Francis' new Academy for Life. Hilgers is a strong opponent of contraception and artificial fertilization. According to Magister, "this is probably the reason why he has been excluded."

A strange new nomination is the Italian biologist Angelo Vescovi, a personal friend of the Academy's president Archbishop Paglia. Vescovi is involved in adult stem cell research, but has never opposed embryonic stem cell research. Some years ago, in his laboratory in Milan, a five-month old unborn baby was found. He spoke of "sabotage". Strangely, no criminal charges were filed.

A non-Christian appointee is Israeli Rabbi Avraham Steinberg, who directs a Jewish medical ethics unit in Jerusalem. He is open to abortion, in-vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Archbishop Paglia preferred him to the Roman chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, also a physician and expert on bioethics, but whose positions are more moral and sometimes explicitly critical of Pope Francis.