Holy Father Pope Francis has sent a letter to the participants in the European Regional Meeting of the World Medical Association on end-of-life issues, highlighting the challenges with regard to this issues. His Holiness called for greater wisdom in striking a balance between medical efforts to prolong life and the responsible decision to withhold treatment when death becomes inevitable.
As reported by en.radiovaticana.va, Holy Father Pope Francis remarked that “The anguish associated with conditions that bring us to the threshold of human mortality and the difficulty of the decision we have to make, may tempt us to step back from the patient. Yet, this is where, more than anything else, we are called to show love and closeness, recognizing the limit that we all share and showing our solidarity.”
Holy Father acknowledged that it is often difficult to determine the proper course of action in increasingly complex cases and also raised the issue of a systematic tendency toward growing inequality in health care, both globally. His Holiness also emphasized the need to recognize different worldviews and ethical systems and noted the duty of the state to protect the dignity of every human person, especially the most vulnerable.
