Pope John Paul II has called every intellectual to serve as a "critical conscience" to keep academic pursuit as a "service of thought" and a blessing rather than a threat to life.
A June 8 speech the pope gave on the 600th anniversary of the theology faculty of Jagiellonio University in Krakow, the city of his birth in southern Poland, focused on the integral notion of the human person.
Vigilance is needed to avoid "changing sciences from a blessing into a serious threat to humanity," said the pope, who was in Poland for the closing of the 46th International Eucharistic Congress in Wroclaw on June 1.
"From being a subject and goal, man is not infrequently considered an object and even a form of ´raw material,´" the Holy Father observed.
"Here we need only to mention experiments in genetic engineering, which are a source of great hope but at the same time of considerable preoccupation for the future of the human race," the pope explained.
Citing the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, the pope said, "Our age, more than any in the past, needs such wisdom to humanize man´s discoveries. For the future of the world is endangered unless wiser men are forthcoming."
The call of every intellectual, independent of personal convictions, the pope asserted, is to let himself or herself "be guided by the sublime and difficult ideal, and to function as a critical conscience regarding all that endangers humanity or diminishes it."
Some Italian newspapers ran headline stories on the speech, claiming that the pope had condemned cloning, a topic of lively debate in European media since scientists in Scotland cloned an adult sheep several months ago.
However, while cloning obviously fits into Pope John Paul´s general warning, he made no specific reference to it, "not even a word," as one Vatican press official put it.
The May 31-June 10 trip to Poland was the sixth visit the pope made to his native country.
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