Pope Francis has said it
can be acceptable to suspend treatment in some cases in patients
that are close to death.
"It is morally licit to decide not to adopt therapeutic
measures, or to discontinue them, when their use does not meet
that ethical and humanistic standard that would later be called
'due proportion in the use of remedies," the pope said in a
message to Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, president of the
Pontifical Academy for Life, and to the participants in the
European Regional Meeting of the World Medical Association on
end-of-life issues.
"It is clear that not adopting, or else suspending,
disproportionate measures, means avoiding overzealous treatment;
from an ethical standpoint, it is completely different from
euthanasia, which is always wrong, in that the intent of
euthanasia is to end life and cause death".
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