Pope Francis publicly decried the approval of a euthanasia law in Portugal on 13 May, the feast of Our Lady of Fátima.
Speaking in the Vatican, the Pope said: “Today when we celebrate the memory of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to the little shepherds of Fátima, I am very sad, because in the country where Our Lady appeared, a law to kill has been approved”.
Three days later, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa signed the bill into law, although it will be subject to regulation before it comes into effect.
Rebelo de Sousa is a practising Catholic who has made his opposition to euthanasia clear over the past seven years, regularly thwarting attempts by parliament to legalise it.
This was the fifth time parliament voted on the legalisation of euthanasia. The first time it failed in parliament, and the president vetoed a second bill which received parliamentary approval.
Rebelo de Sousa sent to subsequent bills approved in parliament to the Constitutional Court, which rejected them for lacking clarity on key concepts such as the definition of pain.
This fifth time, however, the president said he would not send the bill to the Constitutional Court, but asked Parliament to clarify some passages.
MPs declined to do so, and by returning the document to him unchanged he was constitutionally bound to sign it.
Sources close to the president’s inner circle told The Tablet that this may not be the end of the dispute.
At least two other parties have already publicly announced that they will ask the Constitutional Court to examine the law in full – a move likely coordinated with Rebelo de Sousa – and the president may still be able to obstruct attempts to regulate the final version of the law, although the government could work around this.
The Portuguese bishops’ conference was among many Catholic organisations that criticised the approval of the law, saying that “with the legalisation of euthanasia, the fundamental principle of the inviolability of human life is shattered”.
The associations of Catholic jurists and of Catholic doctors also expressed their dismay.
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