The Pope’s state of health continues to monopolise the attention of the media in Germany. Writing in Die Welt (30/3), Michael Stürmer comments: “ This Pope remains faithful to himself in his sense of vocation and fulfilment of his obligations, literally to the end. He acts in real and a symbolic mode at the same time, reminding people that in the last analysis death cannot be removed by technology and painkillers, but that it belongs to the human condition, just like life”. “No one has ever seen a man of power, a ruler, so small, so humble, so impotent, so ill, so worthy of being pitied. In front of everyone’s eyes”, writes Gerhard Stadelmaier in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (31/3). “ Nor has anyone ever seen someone so great in his smallness, so grand in his impotence, so eloquent in his silence. In front of everyone’s eyes. Not only on Easter Sunday. Yesterday, on a working day, this scene of the Pope was repeated with wonderful persistence. Not as a gesture. Not as a symbol. Not as a scene. Only a defenceless man, who at this time announces only what one ought to understand as the true secret of this man: not the secret of the theatre or of theatricality: […] the secret of his faith. This faith need not necessarily be shared or embraced. But this faith moves“. The weekly Der Spiegel (28/3) also dedicates its cover story to the pope: “ The Pope on the throne of Peter is the most political and also the most ethically rigid Pope who has ever existed. His life and his public suffering in the divine task given to him have made him become the biggest media star of all time. John Paul II has led the Catholic Church for 26 years and his fans fear the time when this era will come to an end“. The case of Terri Schiavo also attracts widespread coverage in the international press. For the Spanish daily La Razon (29/3), “ it must not go beyond the individual case it represents. The right to life right up to its natural end takes precedence over every other consideration”. “ The end of life. Who decides? “ is the title of the cover story in Time (04/4) which carries the subtitle: “ How politics and principles conflict in the American battle over Terri Schiavo”. The magazine also carries a report dedicated to the “ debate in Europe on euthanasia“. While the young woman who has been in a coma for 15 years seemed on the point of dying, the weekly magazine points out that this case has led “ people to think seriously about what it means to be alive or dead, and how we should prepare for our own death. All of a sudden, couples meet round the table or start discussing in bed how they would like to be treated towards the end of their own existence and make plans for the drafting of their own biological will“. Turning to a consideration of the attitude to euthanasia in Europe, the magazine points out that “ ten years ago Pope John Paul II signed the encyclical ‘Evangelium Vitae’ which branded euthanasia as ‘a crime that no human law can claim to legitimize’. ‘There are no obligations of conscience to obey such a law’, says the encyclical. ‘On the contrary there is a serious and clear obligation to oppose it through conscientious objection’. Many seem content, however, to leave such momentous decisions, like that in the Schiavo case, to the conscience of families and doctors“. The French daily La Croix (29/3) also devotes extensive coverage to the ethical and religious debate on “ the suspended lives of these human beings in a vegetative state“. In his comment with the title “ This breath that dwells in us“, Michel Kubler declares that “ it is an honour for society, faced by these situations that may seem totally desperate, to fix as a priority the destinies of the persons involved. In the name, precisely, of the dignity they, together with all the rest of humanity, have been given as their birthright for ever … this principle of dignity is in itself sufficient to know in what direction we need to move. And there’s not even any need to believe in God to follow it“. The fear of a new tsunami in South East Asia, three months after the previous one, is the front-page story on most Spanish dailies on 29 March. “Panic in Indonesia for fear of another tsunami” is the headline in Abc, while El Mundo comments that “A submarine earthquake of great intensity sows panic in the area devastated by the tsunami”. A few days before the new quake was registered (27/3), the daily El Paìs had recalled that “the majority of the victims of the tsunami were women” and that “its demographic effects will be felt in the coming years”: the tsunami, writes El Paìs citing a study of the relief organization Oxfam, “ killed more women than men, approximately four times as many in some regions”: “a disproportion due to the fact that most women were at home at the time or on the beaches struck by the waves”. Oxfam reports the paper has also “received information on sexual abuses in the camps for the homeless”.———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1375 N.ro relativo : 24 Data pubblicazione : 01/04/05
