She was killed

It didn’t have to end this way.

Eluana Englaro, the Italian Terri Schiavo, has died.

Maurizio Sacconi made the announcement in Italy’s Senate as politicians were debating a law that would have forced doctors to continue feeding her.

While people in society talk things to death, it is to the death of actual persons, and human dignity, and more of our soul.

Doctors at a private clinic in the northern city of Udine had been withholding her food since Friday.

They had earlier said Ms Englaro might live for another two weeks….

Senators debating the bill designed to stop her feeding tubes being removed observed a minute’s silence when the news was read out in the chamber.

One wonders whether there were any interior revelations in that moment, any recognition that legal and political wrangling hastened this young woman’s death. 

The Vatican, which had described the decision to let Ms Englaro die as “abominable”, asked for God’s forgiveness for those responsible.

“May the Lord welcome her and forgive those who led her there (to her death),” Vatican health minister Javier Lozano Barragan told the Ansa news agency.

And may we find a way as human beings to prevent such horrible killing in the name of ‘mercy’.