Vatican City (AsiaNews) Card Renato Raffaele Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, reiterated today the Vatican's opposition to all forms of human killing, from abortion and euthanasia to terrorism and the death penalty.
He spoke during a meeting with Bob and Mary Schindler, parents of Terri Schiavo, the woman who was in coma for years and who died after judges accepted her husband's decision against her parents' wishes to pull the plug on the life support machine that kept her alive.
The Schindlers, who are in the Vatican along with the promoters of the Association of the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life who came to the Holy See to obtain their statute, attended Pope Benedict XVI's General Audience.
They expressed their gratitude to Cardinal Martino for his attempt to "keep their daughter alive".
Cardinal Martino decried the "woman's death as one of the most inhuman and cruel form of killing since it was by hunger and thirst".
He encouraged the initiatives of the new Association reminding those present of what Pope Benedict XVI said in Saint John Lateran, namely "that the freedom to kill is not true freedom, but a tyranny that reduces man into slavery".
The president of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace said that "this does not only mean abortion and euthanasia but also the death penalty, war, terrorism, the destruction or manipulation of human embryos, mass starvation or destruction of the natural environment".