ELUANA Englaro, the comatose woman at the centre of a euthanasia row that has divided Italy and sparked a constitutional crisis, died last night at the age of 38, four days after doctors began to remove her life support.
Eluana Englaro
Said a senior Vatican official:
May the Lord welcome her and pardon those who brought her to this point.
Ms Englaro’s father, Beppino Englaro, had been fighting for a decade for a dignified end to his daughter’s life in accordance with what he and her friends have testified were her own wishes. At his request doctors at a clinic in Udine stopped feeding Ms Englaro on Friday.
According to this report, the Vatican and Roman Catholic Church had opposed the ruling fiercely and were swift to respond to news of Ms Englaro’s death. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, the Vatican Health Minister, said:
I will continue to regard her death as a crime.
Earlier Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Episcopal Conference, declared that refusing food and water to Ms Englaro was murder.
The news of Ms Englaro’s death came as the Upper House of parliament began debating emergency legislation rushed out by the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi. It would have ordered medical staff to restore all nutrients. She had been in a vegetative state for 17 years after a car accident.
The Senate interrupted the debate on newes of her death, and observed a minute’s silence as a mark of respect. After the silence came the recriminations. Gaetano Quagliarello, a centre-right senator, shouted:
She didn’t die. She was killed!
Others screamed “murderers, murderers” towards the Opposition benches.
For the third day in succession Pope Benedict XVI referred indirectly to the case, declaring yesterday that
The sanctity of life must be safeguarded from conception to its natural end.
Rome’s right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, announced that the Colosseum would be lit all night in a sign of mourning for
A life that could have and should have been saved.
Meanwhile, the news from Buenos Aires is that barmy Bishop Richard Williamson, the Holocaust denier, has been sacked.
In a statement, Father Christian Bouchacourt, the head of the Latin American chapter of the Catholic Society St Pius X said Williamson had been relieved as the head of the La Reja seminary on the outskirts of the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires.
The decision came hours after Pope Benedict and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who publicly criticized the pontiff for his decision to rehabilitate the bishop, spoke by telephone.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
February 10th, 2009 at 11:02 am
How many tears did ‘Benito’ Berlusconi or Pope Ratzo shed over this woman? They knew nothing of her existence till last week. And her poor parents, who waited for her to come round for so long, apparently aren’t entitled to an opinion unless they agree with the corrupt political boss and the dodgy, deluded pope. A sad case, but I’m glad the parents got their wishes in the teeth of opposition by the mediaevalists who confuse mere biological processes with human life.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:17 am
There was crime and Eluana Englaro and her parents were the victims. Perpetrators: Italian politicians and the Vatican, plain and simple.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:26 am
It seems to me pretty obvious that the Catholic anxiety over euthanasia is a textbook example of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, they insist that the Afterlife is where it all really starts happening, after we’re dead – paradise, bliss, perfection etc. On the the other hand, not far below the dogmatic surface, they know that this is all complete bullshit.
Their inability to resolve this personal crisis – a crisis, let’s remember, that is completely irrelevant to the real ethical concerns of everyday life, as they affect people not involved in these theistic fantasies – is why they go hysterical when confronted with people making genuinely responsible moral decisions about life and death.
It’s pathetic, but it’s also an intrusion into sanity that the rest of us should really not have to tolerate any longer.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:46 am
That the Vatican even has a ‘Health Minister’ is a total joke. AIDS? What’s that?
“And the LORD said, go forth into the world, and have unprotected sex.”
February 10th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
The vatican health minister can regard it as a crime if he wants, who gives a shit what he thinks? Surely the most important point is that common sense prevailed. Her parents can now get on with their lives and she is out of her misery.
A sad story no doubt, only made worse by the friggin catholics, Wankers!!
February 10th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
If there had been a little common sense and compassion, the ‘living corpse’ would have been allowed to cease to function naturally, years ago. The parents would have grieved and then resumed their lives, a little sadder, but not tortured by the sanctimonious twats who are running Italy. But no, the self promoting, breast beating politicians and religious leaders just had to get in on the act to see who had the biggest dick and was the loudest and therefore the ‘most holy’. It really makes you sick. We are supposed to be living in a civilized society and yet we have these sad arsed people dictating ‘morals’ to the rest of us, while sticking their ladles in the gravy while our backs are turned. Ho Hum…
February 10th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
newspaniard,
“But no, the self promoting, breast beating politicians and religious leaders just had to get in on the act to see who had the biggest dick…”
I’ve noticed a typing error in your post and hope you don’t mind me pointing it out to you. Should read:
“But no, the self promoting, breast beating politicians and religious leaders just had to get in on the act to see who IS the biggest dick…”
February 10th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
“The sanctity of life must be safeguarded from conception to its natural end.”
And in what sense is shoving feeding tubes up someone’s nose to prolong their life “natural”?
Idiot.