The introduction of this bill had been postponed so as not to irritate him, but he did not miss the opportunity to speak on the subject. "We do not play with life," Pope Francis warned Saturday on his return from his visit to Marseille, shortly before the examination of a controversial bill in France that could authorize "active assistance in dying".
"We don't play with life! We do not play with life, neither at the beginning nor at the end," the pontiff repeated at a press conference on the plane back to Rome. Jorge Bergoglio held talks late this morning with French President Emmanuel Macron for the fourth time in six years, their first meeting outside the Vatican.
Asked about the subject, the pope replied: "Today, we did not talk about this theme. But we talked about it last time (in October 2022 at the Vatican)."
Already a first comment in the morning
"I spoke clearly (...): I gave my opinion. With life, you don't play. Neither at the beginning nor at the end," the pope said. "Today, let us be attentive to the ideological colonizations that (...) go against human life." "Otherwise, it will end with this policy of painlessness, of humanist euthanasia," he warned.
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According to Emmanuel Macron's entourage, the two men addressed the subject on Saturday, but the president stuck to the "calendar" and "methodology" of a text expected "in the coming weeks". It was theoretically supposed to be presented before the pope's visit, but was postponed.
This text, which could go so far as to include "active assistance in dying", would open a new right only to adults, suffering from an incurable disease and with a vital prognosis engaged in the "medium term". In his speech Saturday morning, the pontiff defended the "falsely worthy prospect of a gentle death, in reality saltier than the waters of the sea."
