The Archbishop of Montevideo and Cardinal Primado del Uruguay, Daniel Sturla, criticized the return to the Parliament of the bill to regulate euthanasia in the country, ensuring that it is “an error” to treat it again.
With a modified text that responds to the sharing of initiatives of the Colorado Party and the Frente Amplio, the Parliament will discuss again the bill that in 2022 obtained half a sanction in the House of Representatives, but did not achieve the approval of the Senate.
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The project proposes that people with terminal, incurable and irreversible diseases can opt for an “assisted death”, provided that their express and repeated consent mediates.
Its promoting sectors assured that the project text establishes strict controls and medical protocols to guarantee safety in their application.
Consulted by Radio Montecarlo On this announcement, Cardinal Sturla said it is “a macana” that the project is again treated after having been rejected in the previous management.
“We, of course, are always defenders of life, of life care, from the moment of conception to its natural death. It seems to us that it is a mistake and that, in addition, it is being played with an issue that for us, Uruguayans, it is fundamental, also given the reality of our country, which is to always defend life,” he said.
As an alternative to this project, the archbishop claimed that the one that considers a “good law of palliative care”, which was approved in the country, so that “no person lacks care.”
“The Church also rejects what is called therapeutic tenderness, that is, it is not that people who are in a terminal situation continue to live with extraordinary means, but to accompany with palliative care the last moments of their life,” he said.
This is the case of Hospice San José, founded by a group of Catholics: a house that serves patients who are admitted to some public hospital in serious condition and have nowhere to go.
The home offers medical attention and spiritual accompaniment, “but above all the attention of the love that people need to pass the last months or life time when there is a disease in between,” said Cardinal Sturla.
Julieta Villar
I am a journalist, a graduate in Communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non -governmental organizations. Since 2016 I dedicate myself to Catholic journalism, first in the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as a correspondent for ACI Press for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.