Harrison EDEH
Pope Leo XIV has faulted the legalisation of medically assisted death as immoral “false compassion,” as he reaffirm stance on Catholic teaching about life during a visit Sunday to Lourdes- the French Catholic shrine notable for miraculous cures of the sick.
Leo,on his third day in France waded into the end-of-life debate that has erupted in countries around the world.
AP news reports that this debate has dominated French politics for years before resulting recently in legislation allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication.
The Catholic Pontiff’s visit to the once staunchly Catholic and officially secular France has been marked by huge crowds — 800,000 at Leo’s Mass on Paris’ iconic Place de la Concorde — and his messaging against abortion and assisted dying.
On Sunday, September 27,the American pope celebrated Mass before some 150,000 people — many in wheelchairs — on the prairie next to Lourdes’ main basilica. He then visited a care center for sick people on the sanctuary’s grounds.
He sought to encourage especially those who live in “terrible pain” that they have inherent dignity that no law or algorithm can “eliminate.”
“On the contrary, it is precisely in the name of this inalienable dignity of the human person that we must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion,” he said. “What is legal is not necessarily moral,” Leo said to applause from the crowd.
Lourdes became a major pilgrimage destination after the Catholic Church officially recognised visions of the Virgin Mary reported here by a young girl in 1858.
The site near the Spanish border draws millions of pilgrims each year, especially sick and disabled believers hoping for a cure from the famed spring water in the Lourdes grotto where the visions purportedly occurred.
Leo arrived in Lourdes from Paris on Saturday night and immediately prayed inside the Grotto of Apparitions and drank from the spring.
“He has given a message of hope for France, a message of hope and greatness for France, and renewal for France,” said Paris pilgrim Pierre Caziljc.
