Euthanasia “is a failure of love, a reflection of the throwaway culture”, despite being falsely presented as “a form of compassion”, Pope Francis said. Source: Vatican News.
Pope Francis made the comments in a message to participants at an international interfaith symposium on palliative care in Toronto, Canada.
He said true compassion does not involve ending someone’s life but being willing to accompany them and share in their physical, emotional, psychological or spiritual suffering.
As such, it affirms “the fundamental and inviolable dignity of every person, especially the dying” and helps them “to accept the inevitable moment of passage from this life to eternal life”.
Reflecting on the theme of the gathering – “Towards a Narrative of Hope” – Pope Francis said: “As members of the human family and especially as believers, we are called to accompany, with love and compassion, those who struggle and have difficulty finding reasons for hope.”
Those who are suffering from sickness and approaching death needed “the witness of hope provided by those who care for them and who remain at their side”, he said.
He said palliative care, in attempting to lessen the burden of suffering is a “concrete sign of closeness and solidarity to those who are suffering” and can help those facing the end of life and their families and loved ones “to accept the vulnerability, frailty, and finitude that mark human life in this world”.
In his message, which was read on the opening night of the symposium by the apostolic nuncio to Canada, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovic, Pope Francis carefully distinguished between “authentic palliative care” and euthanasia, “which is never a source of hope or genuine concern for the sick and dying”.
As such, it affirmed “the fundamental and inviolable dignity of every person, especially the dying” and helped them “to accept the inevitable moment of passage from this life to eternal life”.
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Pope Francis: Palliative care a sign of closeness to those who suffer (By Christopher Wells, Vatican News)
