Legalization of medically assisted death in dying (MAiD) is sweeping the Global North; countries of the European Union and 13 U.S. states have legislation in progress.

On June 4, 2025, Pope Leo XIV spoke against France’s assisted dying bill because “our world struggles to find value in human life, even in its final hour.”

In a letter to the bishops’ conference of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland opposing the legislation, he wrote “the mystery of suffering, so prevalent in the human condition, can be transformed by grace into an experience of the Lord’s presence…”

Many Catholics have been seduced to reject Jesus’ salvific suffering.

Doctrinal warnings

This pastoral concern is echoed in the Church’s broader teaching, particularly in the document Samaritanus Bonus, issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in December 2020. It identified contemporary obstacles to valuing the dignity of all persons made in the “image of God,” including the primacy of rights and autonomy, technological solutions for spiritual issues, and secularisation.

The consequences of assisted death are tragically clear.

Canada’s warning to the world

Nowhere are these consequences more visible than in Canada, which has become a sobering example of the risks the Church warns about.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada decriminalised medically assisted death, on a Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge, for competent adults with: “a grievous medical condition…; that is irremediable; and causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition.”

It was not confined to terminal illness or dying but boldly identifies suffering.

Legal developments and consequences

Bill C-14, MAiD legislation, is not about palliative care, but assistance in causing death.

Research reveals “MAiD in Canada is the world’s fastest growing assisted-dying program,” rapidly normalised—it is the fifth commonest cause of death and under-reported. (Cardus, From Exceptional to Routine)

It promised protection of conscience for practitioners, who are now required to offer it as an option and make effective referrals.

Erosion of safeguards

Bill C-14 promised protection of conscience for practitioners, who are now required to offer it as an option and make effective referrals.

It also promised protection of the vulnerable.

However, ethical analysis reveals erosion of safeguards such as “reasonably foreseeable natural death,” and tragic failure to protect vulnerable and marginalised people—the elderly, poor and minors. (The American Journal of Bioethics, “Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying,” Lyon et al.)

Autonomy, choice and reality

These failings expose a deeper contradiction—between the ideal of free choice and the reality many patients face.

Free choice requires information, competence, voluntariness and options. Requests for MAiD from feelings of loss of dignity, dependence, guilt at being a burden, loneliness and loss of meaning compromise freedom and voluntariness.

Psychiatric illness as the sole medical condition will be included in March 2027.

Increasingly, housing insecurity and social issues limit options.

Catholic call to action

Faced with this landscape, the Church must respond with clarity and courage.

• To reclaim salvific suffering and Resurrection hope.
• To identify courageously the horrific consequences to the vulnerable and needed safeguards.
• To accompany the dying with real compassion and advocate for accessible palliative care and economic reforms.

• Nuala Kenny is a Sister of Charity in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a pediatrician. An officer of the Order of Canada since 1999, she has published several books, including Healing the Church (Novalis, 2012) and Rediscovering the Art of Dying (2017). She is co-author of Still Unhealed: Treating the Pathology in the Clergy Sexual Abuse Crisis (Novalis and Twenty-Third Publications, 2019). She most recently published A Post-Pandemic Church: Prophetic Possibilities (Novalis and Twenty-Third Publications, 2021).
• Flashes of Insight is an international publication. The editorial policy is that spelling reflects the country of origin.