Italian President Giorgio Napolitano has set off a firestorm in traditionally Catholic Italy by calling for a parliamentary debate on euthanasia.
The head of state urged the debate on Sunday after receiving a letter from a terminally ill man who is fighting for the legalisation of mercy killing.
Afflicted with advanced muscular dystrophy, 60-year-old Piergiorgio Welby wrote to the president saying that he wanted the right to die in dignity and that Italians should have the same access to euthanasia as "the Swiss, Belgians and the Dutch".
Welby, who was diagnosed with his disease when he was a teenager, is no longer able to move. He breathes through a respirator, communicates via a voice synthesiser and receives nourishment through a feeding tube. "When a terminally ill person decides to give up those he loves, his friends and life itself, and asks to be able to end a cruelly biological survival, I believe that will should be respected," Welby wrote in his open letter to Napolitano.
The president wrote back saying he had been "deeply moved and touched" by Welby's words and that he wanted lawmakers to debate the euthanasia issue.
"The only unjustifiable response would be silence," he said.
But the call caused a predictable split among lawmakers, many of whom are Catholics and follow the Church's teaching that life should end at the moment of natural death. As it stands, euthanasia is illegal in Italy, as it is in most countries, and doctors who perform it face up to 15 years in jail.
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, who acts as the Vatican's health minister, sought to quash the issue on Monday by saying that "for the Church, euthanasia amounts to murder, it's as simple as that, and therefore it can never be allowed".
"It's forbidden by the fifth commandment. God's law is extremely clear on this and there is no room for misunderstanding - one must not kill," the cardinal said. "Catholic parliamentarians must act with consistency," he added.
Politicians on both sides of the political divide echoed the Church's line.
Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, a member of the centre-left, Catholic Daisy party, said that "we are against euthanasia - the centre left is against euthanasia". But the minister also said it was "absurd" to transfer a "purely medical, human, scientific debate" to the political arena.
Health Minister Livia Turco, a member of the Democratic Left, also said she was against euthanasia. Forza Italia, the party of opposition chief and former premier Silvio Berlusconi, said that opening a political debate on the issue would mean "splitting the country in two without obtaining any positive results".
Former foreign minister Gianfranco Fini, who heads the rightist National Alliance (AN), said that "laws which allow people to kill themselves are unacceptable and should be that way for everyone, not just Catholics". Premier Romano Prodi, a practising Catholic, has not yet commented on the question.
But some centre-left lawmakers hailed Napolitano for raising the issue and accused euthanasia critics of bowing to the Church.
The Radicals, a strongly anti-clericalist party in the nine-way governing coalition, said that "we believe Italians are far ahead of their politicians on this matter". It cited surveys showing that 58% of Italians support mercy killing.
Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US state of Oregon.
