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In this
Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009 file photo, head of Pontifical Academy for Life
Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco De Paula attends a press conference at the Vatican.
(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, Files)
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The Vatican's top bioethics official on Tuesday called
"reprehensible" the assisted suicide of an American woman suffering
terminal brain cancer who stated she wanted to die with dignity.
Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the head of the
Pontifical Academy for Life, told the ANSA news agency that "dignity is
something other than putting an end to one's own life."
"This woman (took her own life) thinking she
would die with dignity, but this is the error," Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco
de Paula, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told the Italian news agency
Ansa.
"Suicide is not a good thing. It is a bad thing
because it is saying no to life and to everything it means with respect to our
mission in the world and towards those around us," the head of the Vatican
think tank on life issues said in a report on the Ansa website.
He described assisted suicide as "an
absurdity."
Maynard, who was diagnosed in January with a brain
tumour and had announced plans to take medication to die when her pain became
unbearable, had become the face of the right-to-die movement ahead of her death
this weekend.
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This undated file photo provided by the Maynard
family shows Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old terminally ill woman who planned
to die under Oregon's law that allows the terminally ill to end their own
lives. (AP Photo/Maynard Family)
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The group Compassion & Choices, an Oregon-based
nonprofit that assisted the young woman through her end of life, said on Sunday
that she had passed away surrounded by friends and family.
"Brittany Maynard was not Catholic," said
Reverend Ignacio Castuera, a board member of Compassion & Choices and a
pastor in the United Methodist Church. "People of faith are free to follow
their own beliefs and consciences."
The Roman Catholic Church opposes euthanasia and
assisted suicide, teaching that life starts at the moment of conception and
should end at the moment of natural death.
Brittany Maynard's death in Oregon on Saturday,
following a public declaration of her motives aimed at sparking political
action on the issue, has stirred debate over assisted suicide for the
terminally ill.
Maynard moved to Oregon from California so she could
use Oregon's law to end her life on her own terms.
Carrasco de Paula said "Brittany Maynard's act is
in itself reprehensible, but what happened in the consciousness we do not
know."
He
cautioned that he was not judging individuals "but the gesture in and of
itself should be condemned."
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