On Friday, 12
February, the Holy See issued a press release announcing the appointment by
Pope Francis of Sister Margarita Bofarull RSCJ as a member of the Pontifical
Academy for Life. Margarita is a Sister of the Society of the Sacred Heart, and
is a devoted co-worker with the Order of St John of God. She is a member of the
General Curia's General Bioethics Commission and chairs the Care Ethics
Committee of the "Sant Joan de Déu" Mother and Child Hospital in
Esplugues (Barcelona). She chairs the Board of Trustees of the Borgia Institute
of Bioethics, an ethics referral entity for the Order, shared with the Society
of Jesus. For eight years she has been a member of the editorial board of the
journal "Labor Hospitalaria", and recently of the advisory board. She
has always had a close relationship with the Order and ever ready to cooperate
in anything the Order has asked of her in the matter of bioethics, voluntarily,
and with great professionalism. Her academic background as a physician and
theologian gives her a very appropriate professional profile, together with a
personal profile which has recently been described as "a profound, serious
but always affable woman (...) with a vocation for service, competence,
authority, kindness and above all a very acute sense of justice and
honesty". As members of the Order, we congratulate Sister Margarita and
are delighted at her appointment, which will most certainly be for the good of
the Church and of our society. Thank you, Sister Margarita and congratulations.