"One cannot help loving life: it is the first, the most precious asset of every human being. From love comes life, and life wishes and asks for love. This is why human life can and must be donated, for love, and in donation it finds the fullness of its own meaning, it can never be despised or even less destroyed". This is the beginning of the message sent by the Permanent Bishops Council of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) for the 29th Pro-life Day which will be celebrated on 4th February 2007. Of course, add the bishops, "the days of life are not always the same": "sometimes one is spontaneously led to appreciate life", while some other time "fatigue, disease, loneliness make us feel like it as if it were a burden". But life "is always a precious gift for oneself and for others, and as such it is an un-disposable asset". According to the Bishops, "the true love of life, undistorted by selfishness and individualism, is incompatible with the idea of an indiscriminate possession that leads one to think that everything is ‘mine’", in the sense "of an absolute ownership, abuse, manipulation". Life, in other words, "is the supreme gift on which no one can lay their hands": "even from a purely lay perspective, the inviolability of life is the only, inalienable principle from which one must start, to ensure justice, equality and peace for everyone".
