Culture of death-denial is a flagrant abuse of the rights of individuals

THE key to any man’s essence is the recurring phrase they use throughout life to spell out their central preoccupations. The phrase that surfaced again and again throughout the late Pope’s reign was ‘culture of death’.

In common with Mother Theresa, who in his last days he reportedly wished to sanctify, John Paul used the term to convey a disregard for human life exemplified, as both saw it, by world-wide use of contraception and abortion.

Not coincidentally, in the days after the Pope’s retreat for the last time from the balcony in St Peter’s square, one of his most influential officers used the term in reference to the Terry Schiavo controversy: pulling her feeding tube, he suggested, was part of the contemporary culture of death.