Pope Leo XIV Urges End to Assisted Suicide in Lourdes as France Allows the Practice
Updated
Updated · Fox News · Sep 27
Pope Leo XIV Urges End to Assisted Suicide in Lourdes as France Allows the Practice
3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Sep 27
Summary
Lourdes, France — Pope Leo XIV used a visit to medical facilities and a Mass on Sunday to call for an end to medically assisted suicide, telling a cheering crowd that all human life retains inviolable dignity.
Speaking in French, he called assisted suicide “false compassion,” said “what is legal is not necessarily moral,” and urged healthcare workers to care for suffering patients rather than “eliminate” them.
The pope also broadened the warning beyond end-of-life care, saying no one should decide the fate of an embryo or an elderly person through “laboratory algorithms” and that medicine must not serve “programmed death.”
His intervention landed in France, where assisted suicide is legal, and came as the practice faces renewed scrutiny in Canada after the family of 83-year-old Brigitte Stegemann demanded answers over her death through the MAID program.