The respiratory crisis that Pope Francis suffered on Friday during her two -week hospitalization due to pneumonia added the urgency sensitive and unpleasant, the question of the care of many in the church: what would happen if the Pope remains in a critical state of a long period, with his health, his faculties, his faculties, his quality of life?
And what would be his approach to expanded medical interventions, as well as, ultimately, his plans to end life?
Francis, 88, spoke of a letter about the resignation he put in the finitian shortly after his choice in the event that he became incompetent, but his content is unknown. It is also unknown whether he has a living will or who, if anyone, has confided in making decisions about his health if he can no longer himself.
Asked about the Pope’s wishes, the Vatican replied that it was “too early” to talk about details about the end of life. And while his forecast remained guarded, the health newsletter on Saturday night he had encouraging news of the Pope’s health.
“The clinical condition of the Holy Father remains stable,” the Vatican says, adding that the Pope has no fever or signs of a new infection. It was said to have spent an extended time from non -invasive mechanical ventilation that he initially needed during a respiratory crisis on Friday, he was awake and prayed for about 20 minutes in a private chapel associated with his hospital room. On Sunday morning, they added that he slept peacefully through the night and continued to rest.
Some Pope’s supporters say that questions about his preferences at the end of his life are premature, even intrusive. But church experts say it is a worrying lack of a public protocol on how to make decisions about the end of life for the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. And with failures like Friday’s respiratory crisis, the question is no longer theoretical.
“This is a problem we have to deal with when we get to that,” said Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Vatican Minister of Foreign Affairs, who emphasized that he has no knowledge of Pope’s health, except the Vatican’s public statements.
The Catholic doctrine learns that life begins with conceived and ends in a natural death, and should be defended from beginning to end. But there is ambiguity and discussion within the church about bioethics when the lecture of life is legitimate.
Church teaching allows the cessation of “extraordinary means” to maintain a person alive, but there is a huge interpretation and discussion on the definition of extraordinary means.
Critics of ambiguity say that the Church is terribly behind the time given the breakthroughs in modern medicine and its ability to maintain people through treatments to maintain life such as artificial nutrition and hydration, revival, antibiotics, respirators and dialysis.
“I was told that there was some document that Benedict had prepared,” said Archbishop Gallagher, referring to Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. He added that there was no personal information about her content or whether Francis “indicated that he agreed with the document.”
Asked about the existence of such a letter, the Vatican Printing Office said that there was no awareness of it.
But the notion that there are secret letters that write the desire at the end of life did not comfort those who advocate for transparency.
“The secret documents are really stupid,” Rev. said. Thomas J. Reese, a longtime Vatican analyst, who called on the Vatican to provide clear Pope protocols.
He said that the concealment of documents made them vulnerable to conspiracy theorists in a gossip country in which people still doubt the death of Ivan Paul and, who served in 1978 as a Pope for only 33 days.
“In the family, if there is no document,” said Father Reese, the relatives often struggle with painful decisions when to let go. “Imagine whether this is the Vatican and the Church discussing whether or not we will turn off the pope. It will be chaos.”
He imagined the struggles of critical health decisions between Cardinals who want the Pope to remain alive and those who want someone else, perhaps even, in his place. “These are the types of things that cause unplugged,” he said, referring to the formal and epochal, divided into the church.
Francis publicly weighed the ethics of a problem ending, just not for himself. His remarks, the people who know him, reflect his acceptance of the restriction of humanity as key to his theology and worldview.
“Operation and other medical interventions have become increasingly effective but not always useful,” Francis wrote European meeting of medical experts who discussed questions about the end of life in 2017. He added that it was morally legitimate to give up or abolish some interventions if they only delay the inevitable end. “Such a decision,” he said, “he responsibly admits the limitations of our mortality after becoming clear that opposition is in vain.”
The pope returning in the only 1950s, they measured ethical considerations around the rest of their lives. Pio XII said at a anesthesiologist meeting that in some cases it was appropriate to refrain from therapy.
2020. The Vatican Office on Church doctrine issued a document This promoted the use of hospitals and palliative care and claimed that “extraordinary” care at the end of life could be suspended to avoid long -term suffering at the end of life because “it expresses the acceptance of the human state of death.”
It was important, in the document he said that such a cessation was not associated with euthanasia or a assisted suicide, which he considered “intrinsically evil” because the goal was death.
Singing the patient to the point where they lose consciousness was morally legitimate, the Vatican wrote: “In order to ensure that the end of life arrives with the greatest peace.” The Vatican stated that it was also acceptable to stop inefficient care for people in the vegetative state if the patient had been besieged “excessive burden with negative results that exceed any benefit.”
2024 published a church Academy for Life a Church booklet on terminology at the end of life. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pope’s Academy of LifeAnd the close Pope wrote in the introduction that the booklet was intended to encourage “cordial and deep dialogue” about painful decisions, not “repacked and partisan ideologies”.
In the booklet, he included a live will will be prepared with the help of a priest, and explained that at the end of his life, relief pain could allow patients to focus on their human relations.
“Communication between doctors and patients – is family members,” the booklet states, “the element is determined in the development of ethical choices concerning change in treatment.”
Archbishop Gallagher said that even though he hoped that Francis would return to work soon, it is completely possible that the Pope has now run those conversations.
“Francis,” he said, “maybe telling his doctors these days, you know, about how he feels about these things and what he wants.”
