The Vatican: No form of euthanasia was practised on the late Pope John Paul II, according to his personal physician, Dr Renato Buzzonetti.
In a remarkable interview in yesterday's Rome daily La Repubblica, Dr Buzzonetti dismissed recent speculation that the medical team looking after the late pope had "pulled the plug" on him after he had whispered to one of his attendant Polish nuns: "Let me go unto the Lord."
Last week a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's doctrinal ministry formally headed by Pope Benedict, stated that people "in a permanent vegetative state" have the right to food and drink, even via artificial means such as tube feeding. Such treatment, said the document, was "ordinary" care which should not be discontinued, because patients still had human dignity.
Reacting to that Vatican document, supporters of euthanasia and assisted suicide have argued that the Vatican's doctors did not follow this teaching in the final days of John Paul II's life, in March and April 2005, insinuating that the late pope's medical treatment was prematurely curtailed. Dr Buzzonetti, however, who is also the personal physician to Pope Benedict, refutes such allegations.
"It is simply not true that the Holy Father's treatment was interrupted. His death was a long passion. When he stood at his apartment window [in St Peter's Square] for the last time on March 30th , he wasn't able to even speak. But he didn't throw in the towel. From that day on he was subject to artificial feeding via a nose tube because he was no longer able to feed himself through his mouth.
"He was also given an intravenous drip that remained attached to him right to the end, without interruption. When, on March 31st, he experienced a huge septic shock because of a urinary infection . . . he was given all the appropriate treatment to help his heart and his breathing."
Dr Buzzonetti claims that it was John Paul himself who decided that he would not return to hospital when his condition worsened, despite entreaties to do so from his personal secretary, Mgr Stanislaw Dziwisz. Recalling his last hours, Dr Buzzonetti said: "He confided that phrase in Polish [Let me go unto the Lord] in the merest whisper to Sr Tobiana . . . When the sister came out of the room, she told us that the pope had said to her that he wanted "to be allowed go unto the Lord".
Dr Buzzonetti said this was a mystical call, the highest form of prayer said by a man who sensed that his earthly adventure was coming to an end.
"But the pope was never left alone without doctors and nurses, as some people are wrongly trying to insinuate. For all of us who were close to him, he gave us a great lesson in living. That prayer of his that he recited right up to the end, in his weak, weak voice, almost soundless, barely whispered but full of meaning . . . that was the prayer of a saint who loved life right up until the good Lord called him to his side," he added.