Schiavo effectively being executed, Vatican newspaper says

Schiavo effectively being executed, Vatican newspaper says
Vatican, Mar. 23 (CWNews.com)

Vatican, Mar. 23 (CWNews.com) - The official Vatican newspaper has again decried an American court decision refusing food and water to Terri Schiavo.

The disabled Florida woman is being punished for "the crime of being useless," L'Osservatore Romano observed in its March 23 edition. The newspaper said that federal Judge James Whittemore, who had denied an appeal by Schiavo's parents to reinsert her feeding tube, had declared that the woman's life was not worth living because she could not function normally.

(Judge Whittemore's verdict was upheld on March 23 by a federal appeals court. That court decision came after the appearance of the L'Osservatore article. ) The imminent death of Terri Schiavo is tantamount to a legal execution, the Vatican newspaper observed. Ironically, the decision to cut off her food and water, beginning on March 18, came just as the US bishops' conference announced a new effort to end the use of the death penalty in America.

"But Terri has not committed any crime, except the crime of being useless in the eyes of a society that is incapable of appreciating and defending the right to life," L'Osservatore concluded.

In a separate statement, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, said that removal of a feeding tube is "real and genuine assassination." Speaking to the Italian daily Avvenire , the Cardinal said that the decision to deny food and water to Schiavo was "against the commandment, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill.'" Calling for a "collective mobilization" to save Terri Schiavo's life, he said that the American public should not allow judges to make a decision to end a life--"a right that only belongs to God."

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