SW News: Although the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life opposes assisted suicide, he believes it is conceivable to have a "legal initiative" that would decriminalize it in Italy under "specific and particular conditions." This created a furore, prompting the academy to issue a statement on April 24.

Despite the Catholic Church's unequivocal teachings against abortion, the archbishop considered it a "feasible" approach to the problem in Italian society. In a lecture given on April 19 at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Paglia remarked, "I would not practice suicide assistance, but I understand that legal mediation may be the greatest common good concretely possible under the conditions we find ourselves in."

The text of Paglia's speech was released on April 22 by the Italian news source Il Riformista. According to the Vatican Academy's statement released on Monday, Paglia reiterates his 'No' towards euthanasia and assisted suicide, in full adherence to the magisterium of the Church.

The academy clarified that the president's remarks related to the specific Italian situation and a judgment from the Italian Constitutional Court.

The statement said the archbishop expressed his belief that it is conceivable to maintain assisted suicide as a crime in some situations while decriminalizing it in others by legal mediation, but certainly not a moral mediation.

“For Archbishop Paglia, it is important that the court’s ruling states that the crime of assisted suicide remains as such and is not abolished. Any further consideration is misleading. On a scientific and cultural level, Archbishop Paglia has always advocated the need for accompaniment towards the sick in the terminal phase of life, based on Palliative Care and proximity, so that no one is left alone in the face of illness and suffering, in the difficult decisions they entail,” the statement said.

The penal code in Italy states that "anyone who causes the death of a man, with his consent, is punished with imprisonment from six to 15 years." As a result, assisted suicide and euthanasia are currently both forbidden in that country. In contrast to euthanasia, which involves doctors killing their patients, assisted suicide involves giving patients fatal medications so they can end their lives.

The Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Italy's Parliament, approved a bill last year to decriminalize assisted suicide, which is referred to in Italian law as "homicide of the consenting." Italy's Senate has not yet approved it.

The proposed law, which corresponds to a 2019 decision from Italy's Constitutional Court, states that medically assisted suicide will only be made legal in situations where all of the following conditions are met. The person must be ‘kept alive by life-support treatment and suffering from an irreversible pathology, a source of physical or psychological suffering that he or she considers intolerable, but fully capable of making free and conscious decisions.