The Pontifical Academy for Life warns: French law enshrines a throwaway culture

Rome speaks. The highest Vatican authority on life issues denounces, the day after its definitive adoption, France's entry into the logic of discarding.

The fact

July 17, 2026. On the day after the definitive adoption by the French National Assembly of the French law on end-of-life assistance, Father Andrea Ciucci, chancellor of the Pontifical Academy for Life, speaks out publicly. He qualifies the evolution of French law as an entry into the "culture of waste." The phrase, made common by Pope Francis (Evangelii gaudium, n. 53), designates the mechanism by which a society treats as superfluous human beings whose lives cost too much to its idols.

Our reading (in the light of the magisterium)

This statement is neither an opportunistic comment nor a simple moral protest. It recalls the constant magisterium of the Church. John Paul II, in Evangelium Vitae (1995), n. 65, qualifies euthanasia as a "serious violation of the law of God." The Catechism (§2277) classifies it as "morally unacceptable." The European Court of Human Rights itself, in the Pretty v. United Kingdom ruling of April 29, 2002, had refused to derive a right to die from Article 2 of the Convention. By choosing the opposite, the French legislator crosses the line that Rome, the Strasbourg case law, and natural law had traced together.

To ponder

The Roman word does not make civil law. It makes doctrinal clarity. To Catholic rulers, it reminds them that no civil obedience frees them from obedience to the moral law (Acts 5:29). To suffering Catholics and those who care for them, it offers the assurance that the Church has not bent and will not bend.