A conference on the defence of life was held at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University on 25 September. Organized by the Pro-Life Forum, the Association for Hungarian Catholic Families, the Pro-Life Ecumenical Foundation and the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, under the auspices of Cardinal Péter Erdo, the conference was attended by Catholic and Protestant bishops, professors, doctors and many other representatives of pro-life organizations in the country. The three sessions tackled issues linked to the values and defence of life, health, physical integrity and human dignity from the medical, ethical, legal, theological, pastoral and pedagogical viewpoint. The organizers made an appeal “to all people of good will”, in the hope that they would be “at the service of a society that protects life and the family”. “Feeling ourselves responsible for human life – says the statement reported by the Catholic press agency Magyar Kurír – we profess that human life is, from the moment of its conception to its natural end, a sacrosanct, fundamental and eternal value”, a value that “is not only personal, but also collective and social: the source and premise of every personal right. Its proper and full defence must also be guaranteed in secular societies. In each individual human life we must discover its wonder and inestimable value”. “We humans cannot dispose of life, we are only its stewards, and not its masters; our task is to welcome it with gratitude and love and safeguard it”. The participants at the conference affirmed that “in the matrimonial union man and woman establish an exclusive and indissoluble union for the whole of life, which by its very nature conduces to the well-being of spouses, and to the procreation and upbringing of children”. “In the matrimonial consent, legally expressed and irreplaceable by any human power, man and woman give themselves to each other and accept each other in an irrevocable union”.
