“It is impossible to regard causing death as something normal. What is legal is not necessarily moral.”
― Pope Leo XIV, Meeting with the Staff and Sick Community of Accueil Notre Dame
On Sunday afternoon, September 27, Pope Leo XIV visited the Accueil Notre-Dame, the hospital inside the shrine at Lourdes where sick pilgrims are housed. There he spoke to a room full of people in wheelchairs and on stretchers, and to the doctors, nurses and volunteers who care for them.
On August 19, a little over five weeks earlier, France’s new law creating a “right to assistance in dying” was published [1] in the official journal and took effect. The Pope, in other words, was standing in a country that had just legalized the killing of the sick.
The Holy Father did not beat about the bush, but directly and repeatedly addressed the elephant in the living room.
“I know that for some of you,” he said [2], “because of particular illnesses and, at times, terrible pain, your horizon may appear dark, uncertain and without hope. But no human law should ever make you lose the certainty of your dignity.”
“On the contrary,” he added, “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. It is impossible to regard causing death as something normal. What is legal is not necessarily moral.”
This Past Summer, France Legalized Assisted Suicide
The French law passed the National Assembly on July 15, by a vote of 291 to 241. As I reported [5] several weeks ago, it permits [6] assisted suicide for adults with a “serious and incurable” illness at an advanced or terminal stage, after a reflection period of only two days. If the patient cannot administer the lethal dose, a doctor or nurse may do it.
The French bishops called [7] the vote “a grave rupture in the history of our country.” With its passage, France has joined Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Spain on the list of European nations that permit euthanasia.
France, once known as the “eldest daughter of the Church,” is also, sadly, the country that, in March 2024, became the first in the world to explicitly enshrine abortion in its constitution.
On the first day of the trip, standing alongside President Macron at the Élysée Palace, the Pope said [8] that he was “concerned at times by those trends in society that risk turning science and technology into profit-driven ventures promoting genetic manipulation, surrogacy, the trade in human organs or the possibility of arranging one’s own death.”
And, with Macron listening, he restated that we must,
welcome life unconditionally, to support frailty with loving care, to accompany every stage of life with respect and mutual trust, and to defend with courage and compassion those unable to make their voices heard and those who feel ignored or overlooked. That is why I “firmly reiterate that the protection of the right to life constitutes the indispensable foundation of every other human right.”
Later that afternoon, at UNESCO, he named the mentality behind these trends: a culture in which human lives “are judged according to the criterion of efficiency and, when deemed no longer productive, are rejected and discarded.”
In response, the Holy Father countered by reiterating the core principle of Catholic teaching on the human person: “Our dignity is not destroyed by illness or suffering, nor is it dependent upon our abilities. Rather, it calls for loving care at every stage of life.”
The Fundamental Error: False Compassion
At Lourdes the Pope called out the fundamental error behind the movement to legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia.
“It is precisely in the name of this inalienable dignity of the human person,” he said, “that we must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion.”
In this, he was reiterating the long-standing teaching of the Church, eloquently expressed in Evangelium Vitae [9], in which Pope St. John Paul II wrote that euthanasia “must be called a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing ‘perversion’ of mercy. True ‘compassion’ leads to sharing another’s pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear” (no. 66).
“Laws which authorize and promote abortion and euthanasia,” he wrote, “are therefore radically opposed not only to the good of the individual but also to the common good; as such they are completely lacking in authentic juridical validity.” Indeed, “a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law” (EV, no. 72).
Pope Leo to the Sick: “You are not a Burden”
At Lourdes, however, Pope Leo was speaking above all to the sick themselves.
“Dear brothers and sisters who are sick,” he said, “I want to tell you that you are not a burden. You are the beating heart of our humanity and a precious treasure for the Church.”
Last week I wrote about the death of Brigitte Stegemann [10]. As I noted then, Health Canada’s own report [11] found that nearly half of the 16,499 Canadians who were euthanized in 2024 cited “perceived burden on family, friends or caregivers” as part of their suffering.
This is the culture of death in action. So many euthanasia deaths are essentially a cry for help, in which the sick are saying, “I am a burden, and everyone would be better off if I were gone.” Tragically, our society is increasingly telling such people that they are right, and handing them means to get rid of themselves, so that the healthy need not be bothered any more with their plight.
The Pope went into a hospital and told the sick the very opposite. Earlier that day, at Mass on the prairie below the grotto, he had already told [12] the thousands of sick pilgrims gathered there that “Your crutches, your wheelchairs and your hidden tears are not obstacles; instead, they are the very place where you are fully respected and welcomed.”
He continued, “In the face of current trends that seek to redefine the value of human life in illness, suffering and old age, the grotto of Massabielle stands as a place of Christian hope. Here, no one is turned away due to their frailty.”
Healthcare Workers: Servants of Life
He then turned to doctors and other healthcare workers present, offering a challenge:
I appeal to the entire healthcare community to remember the profound meaning of your vocation, which is to care for a suffering person, not to eliminate that person. Yes, dear friends, be passionate servants of life.
He also repeated what he had told the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation in June: “Medicine must never become the servant of programmed death!” And he gave them a concrete path forward, one that respects the suffering of the sick, but responds with compassion and treatment, not death: “I urge you resolutely to develop structures for palliative care and research.”
This has been the constant message of the Church. Not that the suffering of the sick is unimportant. But rather that we must use human ingenuity to find new ways to alleviate their suffering, in a spirit of accompaniment and compassion.
In November 2025, the U.S. bishops promulgated the seventh edition of the Ethical and Religious Directives [13]. Directive 59 states that Catholic institutions “may never condone or participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide in any way.” Rather, patients who ask for death “should instead be given loving care, psychological and spiritual support, and appropriate remedies for pain.”
Illinois Becomes the 13th State to Legalize Assisted Suicide
Unfortunately, in recent months, the culture of death has been making inroads into America, motivated by the same false compassion that has produced so much unnecessary suffering and loneliness in other jurisdictions that have legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide.
On September 12, just two weeks before the Pope spoke at Lourdes, Illinois became the thirteenth state where doctors may legally prescribe death (the fourteenth U.S. jurisdiction, counting the District of Columbia). Governor Pritzker signed the “Medical Aid in Dying Act,” known as Deb’s Law, last December, claiming that it would allow the terminally ill to “avoid unnecessary pain and suffering.” Asked about it at the time, Pope Leo – the first American pope, and a son of Chicago – said [14] simply: “I am very disappointed about that.”
Illinois now joins California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington.
Unfortunately, the American laws are following [15] the Canadian pattern in another way as well. Oregon and Vermont have both dropped their residency requirements, opening the door to “death tourism.” California has cut its waiting period from fifteen days to 48 hours. And New Mexico now allows nurse practitioners and physician assistants to write the lethal prescription. The “strict safeguards” that were used to sell Oregon’s law back in 1997 are steadily being eroded, as they have literally everywhere that has legalized death as medical care.
Young Men with Down Syndrome Served as Altar Servers
On Saturday, September 26, Pope Leo celebrated Mass before 800,000 people at the Place de la Concorde, the same square where the guillotine once stood. Serving at the altar [16] were six young men with Down syndrome. All six are connected to the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation. They had asked for the honor themselves when they met the Pope in Rome in June.
As Aleteia reports [16], “During a Foundation Jérôme Lejeune audience at the Vatican in June, Théophile approached Pope Leo with a letter signed by all six asking whether they could serve his Mass when he came to Paris.”
They served that Mass in a country where, according to France’s own public health agency [17], roughly 84 percent of pregnancies in which Down syndrome is diagnosed before birth end in abortion. In his homily that day the Pope said: “In his eyes, none of us is merely a number or an entry in a register, but a unique and irreplaceable person.”
The sick, the Pope said, are “the beating heart of our humanity.” Every person is “unique and irreplaceable.” “The human person,” he said, “is ‘worthy’ simply by virtue of existing and of being destined for eternity. Our dignity cannot be measured or debated.”
No law, whether in France or Illinois or Canada, can change any of that. What is legal is not necessarily moral.
I ask you to join me in praying for France, for the people of Illinois, and for every sick or elderly person who has been made to feel, whether by a law or by a look, that they are a burden. They are not. The Holy Father has now said so, in a hospital, to their faces. Let us say it too.