Pope receives Luxembourg’s prime minister, discusses euthanasia legislation

Vatican City, Mar 7, 2008 / 09:31 am

The tiny European country of Luxembourg is rarely heard about, but today the Pope received the prime minister of the Grand Duchy, which could become the third country in Europe to legalize euthanasia.

Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, met with the Pontiff this morning at the Vatican and discussed several items of mutual interest, the defense of life and the ongoing legislative process aimed at the legalization of euthanasia.

Thirty of Luxembourg’s fifty-nine lawmakers voted in favor of the potential euthanasia law, with nearly all the members of the prime minister’s Social Christian Party voting in opposition to the bill.
The bill must be approved at a second reading before it can take effect.

"This bill is not a permit to kill," said Socialist lawmaker Lydie Err, who helped draft the legislation.

World Congress of Families Global Coordinator Larry Jacobs reacted critically to the bill, saying, "Europe is quickly slipping into a new Dark Age, in the words of Winston Churchill, 'made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science’."

"Euthanasia proponents always assure us that the act will be voluntary," Jacobs observed. "But the devil is in the details. Frequently, if a patient is unable to indicate consent, this life-or-death decision is made for them by a relative or a physician."