Deep Sedation Is Unsatisfactory and Extreme in the Eyes of Christian Morals

In a letter signed by Cardinal Parolin and addressed to the 400 participants on the first day, Pope Francis defended the practice of palliative care, the vocation of medical science being to “always to care for”. 

Cardinal Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, warned in his opening speech against the risk of “abandoning the patient as soon as a cure is no longer possible.” He also explained that “behind every request for euthanasia or assisted suicide there are always two fears: fear of abandonment and fear of pain.” 

As for the letter from Cardinal Parolin, written “On behalf of the Holy Father Francis,” it spoke of the “limit” doctors encounter in treating patients at the end of life. Concretely:

...the concluding moments of our earthly life confront the human being with a limit that seems unsurpassable for freedom, sometimes causing rebellion and anguish.

For Cardinal Parolin speaking on behalf of the pope, the deepest vocation of medicine consists in “always caring for”, even if it is not always possible to heal. This limit encountered by medicine and care, if accepted, can be “an opportunity for meeting and communion” with Christ. In other words, an opportunity to prepare for a good death.

Pain Relief Discussed

Another theme broached in the letter from Pope Francis was that of “pain relief”. The letter recalls that Pius XII legitimated “the administration of analgesics to alleviate unbearable pain that is not otherwise treatable, even if, in the phase of imminent death, they may cause a shortening of life,” which is very infrequent today.

With the new drugs, “which act on the state of consciousness and make different forms of sedation possible”, explained Francis, “the ethical criterion does not change, but the use of these procedures always requires careful discernment and great prudence.”  For with sedation, “especially when protracted and deep, the relational and communicative dimension that we have seen is crucial in accompanying palliative care is cancelled.” Deep sedation, declared the pope, “is therefore always at least partially unsatisfactory, so it must be considered as an extreme remedy.”