“In a holistic view of the person, it is necessary to articulate with ever greater clarity all the concrete connections and differences in which the universal human condition dwells and which involve us, starting from our body”. In this context, “also valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different”. Pope Francis said this, referring to his Encyclical “Laudato si’”, in his speech to the participants in the 24^th General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), received in audience this morning. Pope Francis then called for “a careful discernment of the complex fundamental differences of human life: of man and woman, of fatherhood and motherhood, of filiation and fraternity, of sociality and also of all the different ages of life”. He also insisted on a careful discernment of “all the difficult conditions and all the delicate or dangerous passages that require special ethical wisdom and courageous moral resistance: sexuality and generation, sickness and old age, insufficiency and disability, deprivation and exclusion, violence and war”. “Our defence of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development”, Pope Francis continued, recalling his Apostolic Exhortation  Gaudete et exsultate. “Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor”, those already born, the destitute, the marginalised, the “elderly exposed to covert euthanasia, the victims of human trafficking, new forms of slavery, and every form of rejection”.