by InTrieste
Right-to-die activists in Friuli Venezia Giulia had secured more than 8 thousand signatures this year in a petition seeking a referendum. The Friuli Venezia Giulia regional council has put the euthanasia back on the table last week, meanwhile the bishops of Triveneto comment on the deeply divisive issue among Italian political parties.
The euthanasia petition in FVG signed by more than 8 thousand called for a referendum to abolish a clause in a 1930 law that punishes the homicide of a consenting person with up to 15 years in jail.
The referendum would have proposed the removal of penalties for those who assist in the suicide of patients who have incurable illnesses or suffer intolerable pain and have already had palliative care.
The failure of lawmakers to agree on regulations in relation to euthanasia – a deeply divisive issue among Italian political parties – prompted the idea to seek a referendum.
Days before the constitutional court convened to rule on the matter, Pope Francis warned against euthanasia and expressed his gratitude for palliative care. The pontiff said: “We must accompany people towards death, but not provoke death or facilitate assisted suicide.”
In a statement issued last night, the bishops of Triveneto added that “assisted suicide, like any form of euthanasia, turns out to be a shortcut: the patient is induced to perceive himself as a burden due to his illness and the community ends up justifying disinvestment and disengagement in accompanying the terminally ill patient. The first task of the civil community and the healthcare system is to assist and cure, not to anticipate death. The drift to which we expose ourselves, in a highly technological context, is to forget that the therapeutic effort cannot have as its sole objective the overcoming of the disease but, rather, taking care of the sick person”: thus write the Bishops and the Regional Commission for the Health Pastoral Care of the Triveneto Episcopal Conference, in the note entitled “Assisted suicide or assisted sick people?” – and the result of extensive common reflection on these themes which are part of the current political and cultural debate.
