França: Papa reforça críticas à legalização da eutanásia, em encontro com doentes

Pope Leo XIV criticized the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide during a meeting with patients and healthcare workers at the Sanctuary of Lourdes on September 27, 2026. Speaking to the clinical community at the Notre-Dame reception complex, the Pope stated that what is legal is not necessarily moral and that taking a life cannot be accepted as normal.

The Pope told the hundreds of participants that the temptation to end life under the guise of false compassion must be rejected to protect the inalienable dignity of the human person. He noted that while certain diseases and terrible pain can make a patient's situation seem hopeless, no human law should cause them to lose certainty in their dignity. He further argued that medicine must not become a servant of programmed death and that no one has the right to decide the fate of an embryo or an elderly person based on laboratory algorithms.

These remarks follow the French National Assembly's approval of euthanasia and assisted suicide laws on July 15, which President Macron promulgated on August 19. The Pope suggested that the response to profound human suffering should instead involve the tireless development of care structures.