THE Pope has been banging on about euthanasia in the midst of a row raging in Italy over Eluana Englaro, a woman who has been in a vegetative state for 17 years, following a car crash.
Eluana Englaro
Two years after her 1992 accident, doctors said Englaro’s condition was irreversible. This week, Englaro, 38, was moved from the northern Italian city of Leccoto to the La Quiete clinic in Udine that agreed to gradually stop feeding her at the request of her father.
Without referring to her by name, Ratzinger yesterday declared that all human life must be protected, especially that of the weak and suffering. Speaking on the annual World Day of the Sick, he said he wanted to reaffirm with vigour:
The absolute and supreme dignity of every human being [even when] weak and shrouded in the mystery of suffering.
According to this report, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, who heads the powerful Italian bishops’ conference, entered the fray by saying that refusing food and water to Englaro was nothing less than “homicide.”
Writing in yesterday’s edition of the bishops’ newspaper Avvenire, the potty old reactionary – an outspoken opponent of artificial insemination, gay marriage, and atheist bus campaign ads – said:
A light is going out, the light of a life. And Italy is darker.
Groups of protesters — both for and against keeping Eluana Englaro alive — yesterday held demonstrations across the country. Outside the clinic where Englaro is being cared for, a few dozen people shouted “Eluana Viva!” or “Eluana Lives!”
In a bid to keep Englaro alive, Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right government passed an emergency decree on Friday saying that feeding and hydration cannot be suspended for patients who depend on it.
In Rome, about 200 people massed in front of Berlusconi’s office to protest his intervention. “Trust a father’s love: Stop Berlusconi,” read one poster.
But in an unusual confrontation between Italy’s top officials, President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign the decree, saying it defied court rulings that allowed Englaro’s feeding tubes to be removed.
The government now plans to bring a proposed bill to parliament, where Berlusconi’s forces have a majority, to make the decree law. The chambers are expected to take up the issue on Monday, but it wasn’t clear if the bill could be passed in time.
If it passes, Napolitano could ask parliament to reconsider. But if both houses approve it unchanged a second time, it will become law.
Italy does not allow euthanasia. Patients have a right to refuse treatment, but there is no law that allows them to give advance directions on what treatment they wish to receive if they become unconscious.
The Englaro case has drawn comparisons with that of Terri Schiavo, the American woman at the center of a right-to-die debate until her death in 2005.
Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed in March 2005. Congress passed a bill to allow a federal court to review the Florida woman’s case, and then-President George W Bush returned from his Texas ranch to sign the bill into law. A federal judge refused to order the tube reinserted, a decision upheld by a federal appeals court and the Supreme Court.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
February 8th, 2009 at 9:19 am
“The mystery of suffering.”
What a cunt. Seriously. Maybe obergruppenführer Ratzinger would like to experience some himself?
Then he’d find out exactly how “mysterious” it really is. I’m sick of these zombie-eaters using other peoples’ torment as some kind of masturbatory aid.
February 8th, 2009 at 10:44 am
Being kept physically ‘alive’ for 17 years, completely under the control of machines, is the very antitheses of ‘dignity’.
It is ‘abuse’ – abuse of Eluana Englaro’s body and abuse of her friends and family.
February 8th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Didn’t people, during the Terry Schiavo debacle, stand outside the hospital waving “encouraging” placards in the vague direction of the room she was in, honestly expecting god to nip down from heaven and miraculously restore her to health?
Savages. And to beleive this sort of thing goes on in the same country that put man on the moon.
February 8th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
The Rat says all human life must be protected, this from a leader of a religion that has murdered and tortured millions. Any other animal would be allowed to die, why should human animals be different?
February 8th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Ratface’s concern for the sanctity of human life doesn’t exactly square with his decision to let the Society of Pius X scum back into communion with the Catholic Church.
The FBI told an Irish newspaper, back in about 2005, that SPX sheltered the guy sought and eventually convicted for the murder of doctors at US and Canadian abortion clinics for about a year at a Dublin SPX house. It’s a matter of public record that he slipped out in and out of both the UK and Scotland with the help of priests, who were tipped off about imminent raids by sympathetic police officers who also seem to have stalled the raids to respect religious ‘rights’.
February 8th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
In the Catholic nursing home where I live they always withdraw food and water from the dying and they call it natural death. If she has a breating machine then if they pull it away and she dies then she was kept alive artificially and if she can breath on her own then the family can choose to let her live or die. If there were no life supports she would have died already.
February 8th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
If this girl is breathing on her own then her soul is balancing karma in this state. The soul can freely come and go.
February 8th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Eh Doris.
?????
February 8th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Hi shargraves,
What did you want to say to me?
February 8th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
“balancing karma”
My arse!
February 8th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Imagine my disappointment on discovering that the “row” in “euthanasia row” was not being used in the same way as “row” in “death row”. Pronunciation is such a bitch on the intertubes ya know?
February 8th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
How cruel and unthinking these religious loonies are. I can’t imagine how distressing this must be for this poor girl’s family. 2009 and we still pay credence to the nutjobs! I have long considered the pope to be an enemy of humanity, this just confirms it.
February 8th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Jerk! I had the great pleasure of watching both of my parents enjoy the ‘mystery of suffering’ as they slowly died from cancer. Why are there so many sado-masochists in religion? And if ALL life is so sacred why is the church so silent on capital punishment, why do the catholics insist on the poor sods in Africa not having the benefit of contraception and ending up with too many mouths to feed and then slowly starving to death??
February 8th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Permit me to draw attention to my articles, “Pope Hitler is Dead–Sig Heil Pope Himmler,” in Freethinker June 2005; and “Sig Heil Pope Ratzinazi” in Humani Nov/Dec 2006. Karol Wojtyla had the legitimate defence that the 60 million murders by starvation and AIDS attributable to his prohibition of sane birth control and sane disease control were symptoms of his trisomy 21. What is Ratzinazi’s excuse?
February 8th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Dig the quote from that prince among gits Berlusconi – he says that this woman should be kept alive because she ‘is in a condition to have babies’. He really is a shit of the first order, but he sums up the grubby misogyny of his religion rather neatly. Still, with a loopy German Pope, we can hope the Catholic system implodes sometime soon.
February 8th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Chief paed Ratzi should be careful with this one. At his age there’s a good chance of him developing a long drawn out terminal illness. If this occurs will the other wizards at the Vatican break his euthanasia rule? They never seem to live by their own code.
February 9th, 2009 at 10:06 am
The RC church is hell-bent on keeping people alive, using artificial means, while at the same time arguing against anti-conception – equally artificial – as it being against god’s will. The seem to want to have it both ways, silly twats.
As for Berlusconi and his remark about Eluana Englaro still being able to have babies!! I don’t know if it’s my sick mind, but does this mean that she can still be used for creating babies for other people as far as this cretin is concerned? And if this is some kind of standard: what about men in the same condition as Eluana Englaro: salvage spare-parts for the ‘elite’ Berlusconi is part of?
February 10th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I heard on the radio this morning that she has been allowed to die with dignity.
And, yes, Berlusconi – he’s a cunt as well.