Pope Leo XIV Denounces Assisted Dying as 'False Compassion' at Lourdes

Pope Leo XIV used a visit to the French pilgrimage site of Lourdes on Sunday to condemn the legalisation of medically assisted death, telling a crowd of 150,000 that such laws rest on a "false compassion" and cannot strip anyone of their inherent dignity.

Speaking at the shrine, long associated with reported miraculous cures, the pontiff acknowledged the suffering of the sick and disabled faithful before him. He said that for some, serious illness and at times severe pain can make life's horizon appear dark, uncertain and devoid of hope. No human law, he insisted, should cause them to lose the certainty of their dignity.

It is precisely in the name of that inalienable dignity, he said, that the temptation to cause death under the guise of compassion must be rejected. Causing death, he added, can never be regarded as something normal, and he drew applause when he declared that what is legal is not necessarily moral.

The pope extended his argument to decisions made on the basis of technology, saying no one has the right to determine the life of an embryo or an elderly person through laboratory algorithms. Medicine, he said, must never become the servant of programmed death.

He urged those present to develop structures for palliative care and research, and to accompany the sick with the tenderness he said is visible at Lourdes. The remarks reaffirmed longstanding Catholic teaching that all human life should be protected.

Lourdes, near the Spanish border, became a major pilgrimage destination after the Catholic Church officially recognised visions of the Virgin Mary reported there by a young girl in 1858. Millions of pilgrims visit each year, many of them sick or disabled believers hoping for a cure from the spring water in the grotto where the visions are said to have occurred.

The pope arrived in Lourdes from Paris on Saturday night. He prayed inside the Grotto of Apparitions and drank from the spring.