[Chapter 4. Bioethics and religion in Latin America]

We want here to examine the challenge of cultural pluralism that the new discipline of Bioethics is rising to a Church that wants to leave the sacristy. Being herself in the contemporary world, the Church should be involved in those issues and should be concerned by the common anguish shared by secularized society, which does not share necessarily a religious vision of the world. We should question why theology should be interested in bioethics and its problems and the way we tackle them. We should also search what may be the perspectives for dialogue faced with those challenges such as the health as a right and duty; dilemmas that arise at the beginning and end of life, the role of the theologian and religious persons in the new research ethics committees.