September 27, 2006 10:54 AM
Sep. 26 (CWNews.com) - The president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care has weighed in to a debate on assisted suicide in Italy, saying that euthanasia is tantamount to assassination.
In an interview with the ANSA news agency, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said that Catholics serving in the Italian parliament would be under a "moral obligation" to oppose efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
The question of euthanasia has been the subject of a heated political debate in Italy in recent weeks, since a man suffering from muscular dystrophy wrote to President Giorgio Napolitano, urging a change in laws that bar doctors from helping their patients to die. Piergiorgio Welby's plea prompted Napolitano to encourage public debate on the proposal.
Cardinal Lozano Barragan told ANSA that it is important to speak accurately on the subject. Euthanasia, he said, is "an action or omission designed to cause the death of the patient who is in a terminal state." Any such action or deliberate omission, he said, is clearly forbidden by the 5th Commandment. The Mexican cardinal noted that efforts intended to end a patient's life must be distinguished from palliative care, which is designed to ease the pain of the patient.
