Martini vs. Pope over Euthanasia

For the former archbishop of Milan, the seriously ill person has at every moment the right to interrupt the care that keeps him alive. No, objects Bishop Elio Sgreccia, the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life in a January 23rd article in a major Milan newspaper. But the real clash is between Martini and the pope. See Sandro Magister's article, "Cardinal Martini and Euthanasia: When It Is Licit to Cut Life Short" (www.chiesa, January 30, 2007), for Martini's defection from the Church's public position over the case of Piergiorgio Welby, a seriously ill man who, at his own request, died at the hands of a doctor three days before Christmas. The case is said to have generated nearly as much public emotion as that surrounding the Terry Schiavo case in America.