Published: 2 December 2017
Author(s): A. Perciaccante, P. Charlier, A. Coralli, S. Deo
Section: Letter to the Editor

On November 16, 2017 Pope Francis intervened at the European regional meeting of World Medical Association by sending a message about the complex subject of “end of life” [1]. Already in 1957, Pope Pius XII, addressing to intensive care specialists, affirmed that “there is not obligation to have recourse in all circumstances to every possible remedy and that, in some specific cases it is permissible to refrain from their use” [2]. Pope Francis states that “it is morally licit to decide not to adopt therapeutic measures, or to discontinue them, when their use does not meet that ethical and humanistic standard that would later be called ‘due proportion in the use of remedies’” [1].

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