As Italy considers assisted suicide legislation, Pope Francis has opposed any such law. “Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered”, he says. “This ethical principle applies to everyone, not just Christians or believers.”
“We have to be careful to not confuse this help with unacceptable deviations that lead to killing”, said Pope Francis last week. “We must accompany death, not provoke death or help any kind of suicide.”
Emphasising the crucial need for palliative care, not assisted death, Pope Francis warned how society’s most vulnerable persons would become targets of assisted suicide legislation. “I would point out that the right to care and treatment for all must always be prioritised, so that the weakest, particularly the elderly and the sick, are never discarded.”
Pope Francis added that instead of “driving them towards death earlier… the elderly should be cared for as a treasure of humanity: they are our wisdom. And if they do not speak, or if they do not make sense, they are still the symbol of human wisdom.”
The Pope has condemned assisted suicide before, alongside other societal harms, including abortion, essential to what he has referred to as “throwaway culture” that treats the unborn, the sick and the elderly as “waste”.
“This is a road down which we cannot go: the road of discarding.”
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “Society is to be judged by its treatment of the vulnerable, Christian or not.
“Assisted suicide plays on our worst fears and instincts. Instead, we must serve our vulnerable people justly, with dedication and patience, as the treasures that they are, as Pope Francis recognises.
“The Pope’s intercession on this matter contains a vital warning, then, that assisted suicide is really about seeing, and accordingly treating, the vulnerable as essentially disposable objects, no longer worthy of life – or of troubling our own lives.
“Is this what we want to become? Is this how we would ourselves want to be treated?”
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