Pope at Lourdes rejects assisted dying, false compassion

Preaching to the infirm, disabled and those who care for them, the Pope said that “no human law should ever make you lose the certainty of your dignity”.

“We must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion,” Pope Leo said at the Marian pilgrimage site on September 27.

In July, France joined the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada in legalising physician-assisted suicide for people with uncurable and painful conditions. The country’s Catholic bishops had voiced strong opposition to the law.

Meeting on September 27 with the staff of a healthcare facility that offers assistance and lodging for sick and disabled pilgrims at Lourdes, the Pope directly called upon the healthcare community “to remember the profound meaning of your vocation, which is to care for a suffering person, not to eliminate that person”.

“Medicine must never become the servant of programmed death,” he said.

Earlier that morning, the Pope met with France’s bishops and insisted that the Church must insert its voice into the public square, “even if it is not always understood”.

“Even when her teaching is not followed, particularly on essential questions touching the foundations of civilisation, it [the Church] remains necessary.”

Celebrating Mass with some 150,000 pilgrims in a field alongside the shrine, with the front rows occupied by people in wheelchairs, the Pope said that Lourdes is “a place for professing the beauty and sanctity of life”.

At the Mass, he also called on the Church to heal “deep wounds” and “painful errors”, and later had a private meeting with seven survivors of child sexual abuse by French clergy, The Guardian reported.

In Lourdes, the Pope said he hopes all Christians will pray the Rosary especially during the month of October, Vatican News reported.

He called for them to pray the Rosary “with the particular intention that wars may cease and that peace may be established among peoples in conflict”.

Arriving in Lourdes on September 26, Pope Leo prayed at the shrine’s grotto – the cave believed to be where the Marian apparitions occurred – and asked God that the “most disadvantaged and the poorest always be supported” and for the Virgin Mary to “obtain for France wise and generous leaders, ready to make sacrifices, capable of responding to challenges and eager to serve the common good”.

FULL STORY

From Lourdes, Pope Leo issues stark rejection of France’s assisted dying law (By Justin McLellan/National Catholic Reporter)

Pope Leo urges healing of ‘deep wounds’ before meeting child sexual abuse survivors in France (The Guardian)

Pope Leo in Lourdes: Pray Rosary in October for peace (Vatican News)

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