Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday urged the Luxembourg parliament not to legalise euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, expressing deep concern for such an ''evil'' law. In accepting the credentials of Paul Ruhr, the largely-Catholic state's new ambassador to the Vatican, the German pontiff said lawmakers should always ''reaffirm the greatness and inviolable nature of human life''.
Lawmakers, doctors and families should bear in mind that ''a deliberate decision to deprive innocent humans of their lives is always evil from a moral point of view and can never be lawful''.
Luxembourg will become the third European Union country to legalisize euthanasia once revisions in the bill - which has already passed first reading - are approved.
The Netherlands did so in 2002 and Belgium followed suit in 2003. The bill, which is due to be approved later on Thursday, would allow those with incurable diseases to die if they repeatedly asked to do so and had the consent of two doctors and a panel of experts. In a new doctrinal document released last week the Vatican reiterated its condemnation of abortion, euthanasia contraception, the so-called 'morning after pill' and all uses of embryos in research.
Top Vatican officials have also recently spoken out in several controversial cases where terminally ill patients were allowed to die, sometimes by having life-sustaining therapy suspended.
Catholic doctrine states that human life must be defended from conception to natural death, hence it is unacceptable to kill embryoes or to let a terminally ill person die, even if he has requested this.
Last month the Church criticized the World Health Organization's 60-year-old definition of health, warning it could pave the way for euthanasia.
A front-page editorial in the official Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano said the widely accepted definition was dangerously broad.
WHO defines health as ''a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity''.
''If the individual makes the final decision on what constitutes illness, he may end up claiming that life itself is an illness in his personal view, resulting in the provision of structures and means to bring it to an end,'' warned the commentary, written by Carlo Bellieni.
''This is what happens in Switzerland. A study by the Fond National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique shows that 30% of assisted suicide cases do not involve someone affected by a terminal illness but individuals such as the 23-year-old Briton unable to bear a second-class existence in a wheelchair''.
The almost entirely paralysed rugby player, who travelled to Switzerland in September with his parents, is one of several right-to-die cases to draw media attention in recent months.
Italy's highest appeals court in November issued a landmark ruling that authorised doctors to switch off the life support system of a woman trapped in an irreversible coma for the past 16 years.
The Court of Cassation ruling was hailed by the woman's father who has been fighting for ten years against Catholic officials and politicians who support the Vatican's position that removing a feeding tube is tantamount to murder.
The Church has also spoken out against living wills, which allow people to specify what steps should be taken if they are no longer able to make decisions in the future.
It recently expressed the view that medical advances meant brain death should no longer be accepted as the legal definition of death.
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(Source: Ansa)