In a letter to Konstantin Kosachev, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the State Duma, or Russia's lower house of parliament, Patriarch Alexis II asked him as head of the Russian delegation to the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly to voice the objection to euthanasia at the next PACE session in Strasbourg. A copy of the Patriarch's letter was sent to Rene van der Linden, Chairman of the PACE.
However grave a patient's condition, we should always hope for God's mercy and for a miracle which may change the suffering person's state any moment, Patriarch Alexis argued.
The Church knows of numerous examples when even fatally ill people would miraculously recover or their illness would stop to progress, he remarked.
More often than not, patients asking for euthanasia do so in a state of depression, which prevents them from adequately assessing their chances for survival, the Russian Patriarch pointed out. According to him, the enactment of a bill making euthanasia practices legal would have disastrous implications not just for people asking for assistance in killing themselves, but also for those agreeing to honor such a request.
Also, the legitimization of euthanasia would undermine all historically accepted codes of medical ethics, which hold that a doctor's mission is to help people carry on with their lives, not to help them die, Alexis II said. Such legislation may also pose a potential threat to patients lacking money for medical treatment, he warned.
According to Patriarch Alexis II, only those solutions can be regarded as religiously justifiable that alleviate patients' suffering without depriving them of "the divine and sacred gift of life."
