Pontifical Academy of Life President Calls Medically Assisted Suicide ‘Feasible’

(CNA) In his remarks on April 19, Archbishop Paglia emphasized that the Church is not a ‘dispenser of truth pills’ when it comes to engaging with a pluralistic society on the most challenging moral issues of the day.

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, grand chancellor of the Pontifical Institute John Paul II, speaks at a press conference.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, grand chancellor of the Pontifical Institute John Paul II, speaks at a press conference. (photo: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA / EWTN)

Shannon Mullen/Hannah Brockhaus/CNA Vatican April 23, 2023

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has spoken in support of legalized medically assisted suicide, calling it “feasible” despite the clear teachings of the Catholic Church against it.

“Personally, I would not practice suicide assistance, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in,” Archbishop Paglia said in a speech on April 19 during the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy.

The Italian archbishop’s remarks were part of a presentation that included a documentary about an Italian man who went to Switzerland to die by assisted suicide. 

The Italian news outlet Il Riformista published the text of Archbishop Paglia’s speech on Saturday. 

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder” and “gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and the respect due to the living God, his Creator” (CCC 2324).

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