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ROME – Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday that all human life must be protected, especially that of the weak and suffering, making a last-minute intervention in a right-to-die case that has convulsed Italy. Groups of protesters — both for and against keeping Eluana Englaro alive — held demonstrations across the country on Saturday. Outside the clinic in the northern city of Udine where Englaro is being cared for, a few dozen people shouted "Eluana Viva!" or "Eluana Lives!" Englaro, 38, has been in a vegetative state for 17 years after a car crash. On Friday, after a decade-long court battle,...

Saturday February 7, 2009 BREAKING: Italian Prime Minister Seeks to Stop Starvation of Handicapped Woman with Emergency Legislation Says he will even seek a constitutional amendment if necessary By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman ROME, February 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has sent a bill to the nation's Senate authorizing the government to prevent a handicapped woman from being dehydrated and starved to death by her father. Seeking to bypass Italy's communist president, who refused to sign an emergency bill with the same text, Berlusconi hopes to have his bill approved by the nation's legislature within three...

ROME, February 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Italy's President and head of state, has refused to sign an emergency measure, passed by the government, that would save the life of Eluana Englaro, the young woman whose food and hydration is being removed starting today. The ratification by the President is required under Italy’s parliamentary system for the law to take effect. The government announced at 3 p.m. (Italian time) today that it had approved the temporary measure, called a “decree law,” that was drafted to prohibit the removal of food and hydration from vulnerable patients. A decree law is a...

www.catholicnewsagency.com Italian government passes emergency decree to save Eluana Englaro Eluana Enlargo Rome, Feb 6, 2009 / 10:50 am (CNA).- Italy’s Council of Ministers, headed by Silvio Berlusconi, unanimously approved an emergency decree on Friday to stop the father of Eluana Englaro from killing her by removing hydration and food. However, this morning at the clinic La Quiete, where Eluana is staying, the process to end her life was initiated. According to the newspaper La Repubblica, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi commented on his motivation for passing the emergency decree, saying, "I do not want the responsibility for the death...

UDINE, Italy, February 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Today, the Italian government announced it has made ready a draft emergency measure that would prohibit the removal of food and hydration from vulnerable patients. As of this writing, the measure, though drafted and ready, has not yet been formally adopted, the final decision being that of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The move comes as pro-life Italians have urgently called upon the government to intervene in the case of Eluana Englaro who had been removed late Tuesday night to a nursing home willing to participate in her killing.  The measure, called a "decree...

ROME, February 3, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Eluana Englaro, who is often referred to as “Italy’s Terri Schiavo,” was transferred late Tuesday night to a hospital that has agreed to participate in her killing by removal of her food and hydration tube. Television news coverage showed a group of pro-life activists gathered outside the clinic in Eluana’s home town of Lecco at about 1:30am, as an ambulance took her away, some shouting “Eluana, wake up!” and “Don’t kill her!”Eluana Englaro, 38, suffered brain damage in a car accident in 1992 and has since been in a state of diminished consciousness....

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that euthanasia is a "false solution" to suffering, adding his voice to a bitter debate in Italy over the fate of a comatose woman whose father wants to remove her feeding tube. During his Sunday blessing, Benedict said that love can help confront pain and that "no tear, from those who suffer and those who are with them, is lost before God." Benedict didn't mention Eluana Englaro by name, but it was clear he was referring to her case, which has made headlines in Italy for months.

MILAN, Italy, Jan. 26 (UPI) -- An Italian court says the government of Lombardy must provide a clinic and healthcare workers for a woman trapped in a vegetative state to end her life. The government had refused to designate a clinic for 38-year-old Eluana Englaro, even after her father won a landmark right-to-die supreme court ruling in November. Monday's regional court decision in Milan said Lombardy "will have to indicate a health clinic" suitable to allow Englaro to die and provide healthcare workers to remove her feeding tubes, ANSA, the Italian news agency, reported. Englaro's father, Beppino Englaro, told reporters...

TURIN, Italy, January 21, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The governor of Piedmont, one of the 20 regions of Italy, has said that should Eluana Englaro’s family choose to send her to a clinic there, there would be no impediment to their plans to kill her by dehydration in accordance with a decision by the Italian high court. This offer immediately follows the announcement of the withdrawal of a similar offer to help kill Eluana by a clinic in the city of Undine. Piedmont governor Mercedes Bresso said “if it were asked,” the region would make a facility available to Beppino...

Italian Clinic Offering to Kill Eluana Englaro in Euthanasia Bid Changes Course by Steven ErteltLifeNews.com Editor January 19, 2009 Email RSSPrint Rome, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- An Italian clinic that offered to help Eluana Englaro's father take her life after he won the right from courts to euthanize her has backed down. The news follows the release of a letter signed by more than 700 Italian doctors and medical professionals who oppose ending her life prematurely.The government-funded medical clinic in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region had offered to help kill Englaro after no hospitals or medical centers in the Lombardy region,...

An Italian father's campaign to let his daughter die after 17 years in a permanent vegetative state has hit another setback. A clinic in the northern city of Udine has dropped its plans to withdraw the feeding tubes that have kept the 38-year-old woman alive since a car crash in 1992. The clinic decided to heed an order from the Health Ministry banning any Italian clinic from doing so. The Italian Supreme Court ruled in November that the woman's father could have the support systems withdrawn.

ROME, January 13, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An open letter by doctors, circulated before Christmas, asking that Eluana Englaro be spared death by dehydration has grown from 44 to over 700 signatures. The letter says that physicians have a “professional and scientific duty” to provide hydration and nutrition to a patient who is not capable of feeding himself. The case of Eluana Englaro, the young woman in a state of diminished consciousness whose father has campaigned in the courts to have her food and hydration removed, continues to make headlines in Italy. In November, the Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest...

MILAN, January 6, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A petition has been presented to the Appeals Court of Milan to re-open the case of Eluana Englaro, the disabled young woman that the court agreed could be killed by dehydration.Epidemiologist and writer Paul Gilusano and Dr. Piero Pirovano, a journalist and president of the group Solidarity, Freedom, Justice and Peace, have asked the court to revoke its decree. They are arguing that Eluana’s case was decided without any medical determination of her condition, but on the word of her father, Beppino Englaro, alone. The Englaro case has been front-page news in Italy...

STRASBOURG, France, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- Italian officials say they are taking a hands-off approach after a European court rejected efforts to block a father's efforts to let his comatose daughter die. Italy's ANSA news agency Tuesday said Beppino Englaro has been unable to find a clinic that will facilitate the death of his daughter, Eluana, who has been in a coma for 17 years. "Personally I hope that the woman continues to live, but I can't interfere with the decisions of her father,'' said Edouard Ballaman, president of the regional council of the Northern League. The European Court of...

ROME, December 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A high-level minister in the Italian government has called “illegal” the proposal to starve and dehydrate to death vulnerable patients in the care of the country’s nationalised health service. The news comes within hours of Italian media confirming that Eluana Englaro, known as Italy’s Terri Schiavo, was to be moved this week to a clinic that is willing to participate in her killing by removing her feeding and hydration tube. Maurizio Sacconi, Italy’s Minister of Labour, Health and Social Policies, told a press conference that it is “illegal” for health care facilities funded...

ROME, November 21, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Some hope still exists to save Eluana Englaro’s life, but the government must move quickly to overcome political differences and act, a prominent Italian lawyer today told LifeSiteNews.com today. The greatest hope to save the life of Eluana Englaro is to have the Italian government pass an emergency measure defining food and water as a human right, and not medical treatment, he said. While a group of pro-life advocates have brought a request for a hearing on the subject to the European Court of Human Rights, such an attempt, he said, will almost certainly...

MILAN, November 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The nuns who run the hospice in which Eluana Englaro has been living for 14 years have refused to carry out the court order to remove her food and hydration tube. On Friday, the highest court of appeals of Italy upheld a previous court’s ruling that Eluana Englaro, the young disabled woman who has been in a state of diminished consciousness since being in a car accident in 1992, may be killed by the removal of her food and hydration tube. In a letter published in yesterday’s Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian...

ROME (AFP) - The Vatican on Friday firmly condemned an Italian court decision allowing a father to remove his comatose daughter from life support, saying "the right to die does not exist." "Life is sacred, the right to die does not exist," the Vatican's "health minister" Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan said in an interview published by the Italian daily La Stampa. On Thursday, Italy's highest appeal court upheld an earlier ruling that doctors could stop artificially feeding Eluana Englaro, 37, as it had been proven that the road accident victim's coma was irreversible. "To stop giving food and drink to...

Rome, Italy (LifeNews.com) -- The brother of Terri Schiavo is condemning the decision handed down today by an Italian court allowing Eluana Englaro's father to starve her to death. Englaro went into a coma after an accident and her father wants to remove her feeding tube and starve and dehydrate her to death.The painful death will be similar to the 13 days without food and water that Schiavo endured before her death.Terri's brother, Bobby Schindler, told LifeNews.com that he thinks the court should not have allowed the Englaro's father to remove her basic care."Today’s ruling will clear the way...

Rome, Italy -- The highest court in Italy has granted the right to a disabled woman's father to kill her via euthanasia by