The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life said he is personally opposed to assisted suicide but would not exclude it for others who wish to avail themselves of it.
In an April 21 debate on end-of-life issues at the Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia said that he endorses “accompaniment” and care as the best approach to assisting the terminally ill but recognizes the legitimacy of laws permitting assisted suicide as furthering the common good.
“In our society, a practicable legal mediation allowing assisted suicide cannot be excluded,” Archbishop Paglia said, under the conditions specified by the Italian Constitutional Court.
These conditions stipulate that to be eligible for assisted suicide, the person must be kept alive by life-sustaining treatments and be suffering from an irreversible pathology, which is a source of physical or psychological suffering that he considers intolerable, and he must be fully capable of making free and informed decisions, the archbishop noted.
“Personally, I would not practice assisting suicide, but I understand that legal mediation can constitute the greatest common good concretely possible in the conditions in which we find ourselves,” Paglia added.
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