Pope condemns assisted dying as ‘false compassion’ during Lourdes visit
Pope Leo XIV has condemned the legalisation of medically assisted death as immoral “false compassion”, as he doubled down on Catholic teaching about life during a visit Sunday to Lourdes.
On his third day in France, Leo again waded into the end-of-life debate that has erupted in countries around the world.
It roiled French politics for years before resulting recently in legislation allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication.
Leo’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’ famous Place de la Concorde — and his messaging against abortion and assisted dying.
On Sunday, 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 centre 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.
In France, Leo has repeatedly called for a renewed respect for life in keeping with Catholic teaching that all human life must be protected and defended from conception until natural death.
The teaching translates into firm opposition to abortion, euthanasia and medically assisted dying.
In Lourdes, where the church has recognised 72 “miraculous” cures as authentic, the question of respecting even the most frail, sick and vulnerable is particularly acute.
“Your crutches, your wheelchairs and your hidden tears are not obstacles; instead, they are the very place where you are fully respected and welcomed,” Leo said in his homily.
“Lourdes is blessed as a place for professing the beauty and sanctity of life, for life is welcomed here as a precious gift from God.”
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