POPE FORCEFULLY CONDEMNS EUTHANASIA

VATICAN CITY, Nov 4 (LSN)  At a conference on “The Church and the Elderly,” which ended last week, Pope John Paul II told attendees that “euthanasia is an attack on life which no human authority can legitimize.” During his talks at the conference, organized by the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers, the pope called for “a sensitivity on the part of families so that they know how to accompany their loved ones to the end of their earthly pilgrimage.”  The leader of the Catholic Church spoke with great respect for the elderly. “The respect which we owe to elderly people compels me to speak out again against all those practices which shorten life and which are known under the name of euthanasia.” He urged the Church to devise “strategies to help” the aged and encourage their dignity so they do not “think themselves useless, and do not reach the point of asking for death.” He decried “the secular mentality which has no respect for life, especially when it is weak.”  Catholic World News reported on the conference which took place from Oct 29-31.