Pope: Euthanasia a product of ideology   

Pope Francis said that as secularization grows throughout the world, so is the idea of euthanasia. 

 “By rendering absolute the concepts of self-determination and autonomy,” secularization leads to “an ideological affirmation of man’s will to power over life,” the pope said in a Jan. 26 speech.

 Meeting with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the pope said the Church needs to be “sensitive” to terminally ill patients. 

“Authentic pastors are those who do not abandon man to himself, nor leave him in the grip of his disorientation and his errors, but with truth and mercy bring him back to find his true face in goodness,” he said. 

“The man of today no longer knows who he is and, therefore, struggles to recognize how to act well,” the pope added, calling for more attention to “the transcendent vocation of man” and “God’s plan for the world.”