“The new humanism” is “a great challenge for both the Church and the whole mankind”. Archbishop of Perugia-Città della Pieve and President of CEI Card. Gualtiero Bassetti is persuaded of that. This morning, in Rome, he opened the 16th annual meeting set up by the Science & Life Association on “Homo Cyborg. The future of man amid techno-science, artificial intelligence, and new humanism”. In the contemporary world – stated the Cardinal – there is a new social question concerning both economic and anthropologic aspects, as well as culture and politics, with remarkable consequences in the religious field, too”. And “awareness of such new social question poses the challenge of new humanism. It is a social question including, as a whole, anthropological and the economic crises, as well as environmental and the political and cultural crises”.

According to Bassetti, “The new technical power is not just economic application of science to daily life; it is a philosophic conception of the world, as well as an extra-religious vision of common life”. Therefore, intellectuals and scientists are asked “to give a new shape and a new meaning to the Christian or secular humanism characterising daily life in the European continent for centuries. The challenge of new humanism is not a question for scholars shut away in an ivory tower; it is a large-scale project whose ultimate scope is ‘preservation of mankind’”. Before the risk of a “new Technologic Adam, a new European humanism is necessary, closer to the poorer” is necessary, as the Pope has stated several times. A new real humanism is necessary – concluded Bassetti – which has to be extremely concrete; technique has to be humanised, and put in the service of man; human life has to be preserved in any instant of living”.