VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — More than two weeks have passed and the new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life has refused to answer questions about pro-contraception comments he made in recent years.
Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro was named by Pope Leo XIV as the new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV) on May 27, replacing the long-standing president Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.
Pegoraro had been first appointed to the PAV in 2011 where he acted as Paglia’s right-hand man as chancellor since the latter’s leadership began in 2016.
Paglia was no stranger to controversy on a number of life issues during his tenure, but Pegoraro has also raised concerns among faithful Catholics.
In a controversial interview he gave in late 2022, Pegoraro appeared open to the possibility of the use of contraception. Speaking to veteran Vaticanist Francis Rocca, Pegoraro was quoted by the Wall Street Journal as saying:
The rule against contraception “signals values that must be preserved in married life – in particular the sense of sexuality and the transmission of life – but it is also true that other values worth protecting may be present in the situation that the family is experiencing.”
For instance, Msgr. Pegoraro said, contraception might be permissible “in the case of a conflict between the need to avoid pregnancy for medical reasons and the preservation of a couple’s sex life.”
Following his announcement as the new PAV president, LifeSite contacted the PAV and Pegoraro himself on two separate occasions, asking him for comment or to clarify these remarks.
The first email was sent on May 27, the second on June 3. To date there has been no response from anyone at the PAV.
However, the PAV’s frequently vitriolic press secretary, Fabrizio Mastrofini, has been customarily active on X. Also, the PAV website has been updated to reflect the change in presidents.
READ: Who is Msgr. Pegoraro, the digital globalist who now heads the Pontifical Academy for Life?
The two-week silence is especially noteworthy given the highly controversial nature of Pegoraro’s remarks, which appear to be in firm contradiction to Catholic teaching about contraception.
As LifeSiteNews has previously reported, the Catholic prohibition on artificial contraception has remained constant.
Section 59 of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii notes that couples are not “considered as acting against nature who in the married state use their right in the proper manner although on account of natural reasons either of time or of certain defects, new life cannot be brought forth.”
Pius XII’s 1951 Address to Midwives affirmed Casti Connubii while also condemning the “abuse” of “the perversion of the act itself,” namely contraception, along with a warning to spouses who are “limiting the conjugal act exclusively to those (naturally sterile) periods.”
Pope John Paul II declared in 1988 that such teaching on the topic “belongs to the permanent patrimony of the Church’s moral doctrine.”
To observers both around the Vatican and further afield, Pegoraro’s record on contraception seems to posit him as a continuity successor to Paglia in at least one regard: namely the questioning of Church teaching and promoting moral confusion.
