"The right answer to the suffering at the end of life is loving care, assistance at death especially with the aid of palliative drugs , not ‘active help to die’". This is the speech given today in the Hofburg Palace in Vienna by the Pope which also gave him the opportunity to confess that he is "extremely worried" about the debate on the so-called "active help to die", connected with such issues as active or passive euthanasia. Benedict XVI is afraid "that, some day, undeclared or even express pressure can be put on seriously ill or old people, so that they ask for death or kill themselves". The way to go, instead, is that of "human assistance at death", to assert which, "structural reform should be urgently made in all the areas of the medical and social system, and palliative care facilities should be arranged", plus "factual steps should be taken in the psychological and pastoral assistance of seriously-ill and dying people, their families, the medical staff and the health-care staff", regardless "of time or expense, in the loving care for the seriously-ill and dying people".
