The Italian archbishop in charge of the Pontifical Academy of Life has said that assisted suicide is “feasible” under certain conditions.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the president of the academy founded by Pope St John Paul II to promote and defend human life, suggested that the practice could not be ruled out if certain safeguards are met.
Such conditions, he said, quoting from a 2019 Italian constitutional court ruling on the withdrawal of life support – and not assisted suicide - might include that “the person must be ‘kept alive by life-support treatment and suffering from an irreversible pathology, a source of physical or psychological suffering that he or she considers intolerable, but fully capable of making free and conscious decisions’”.
