The Holy Father speaks out on euthanasia

Or the mis-appropriately named "right to die."

“How great a lie,” he wrote, “lurks behind certain phrases which so insist on the importance of ‘quality of life’ that they make people think that lives affected by grave illness are not worth living.”

Pope Francis invited people to see the world and those who are sick or in need of care with “the wisdom of the heart”, which is pure, peaceable, gentle, open to reason, merciful, certain and sincere.

“It is a way of seeing things infused by the Holy Spirit in the minds and the hearts of those who are sensitive to the sufferings of their brothers and sisters and who can see in them the image of God,” he wrote.

Having “wisdom of the heart” means going out of oneself and serving others with compassion and without judgment – unlike those who, in the biblical story of Job, who thought Job’s misfortune “was a punishment from God for his sins”, the Pope said in his message.

“True charity is a sharing which does not judge, which does not demand the conversion of others; it is free of that false humility which, deep down, seeks praise and is self-satisfied about whatever good it does,” he wrote.