Vatican urges rethink in right-to-die case

The Vatican and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi piled pressure on Italy's president to change his mind and order that a comatose woman be kept alive in a right-to-die case that has split the mainly Catholic country.

The case has snowballed into a political standoff after President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign and make legally binding a decree by Berlusconi's government ordering doctors to resume force-feeding the woman.

In a rare clash with the head of state, the Vatican publicly sided with Berlusconi, urging Napolitano to reconsider the move and do all he could to keep alive Eluana Englaro, 38, who has been in a vegetative state since a 1992 car crash. "I think the government is doing everything possible to save Eluana's life," Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican's health minister, told Italia 1 television today.

"We ask the Lord that the president of the republic can reconsider ... and find a way to reconcile this decree with the Italian constitution," he said.

Doctors began withdrawing food from Englaro on Friday in line with a ruling by Italy's highest court to allow her to die, as requested by her father.

Hours later, Berlusconi's cabinet issued an emergency decree ordering them to resume feeding the woman, but Napolitano said the measure was unconstitutional because it overruled the country's top judges and refused to sign it.

Berlusconi said today a letter by Napolitano explaining his opposition to the decree paved the way for euthanasia, which is illegal in Italy.

"I had sincerely hoped that the president would distance himself from a judicial stance that we do not accept," he said.

The centre-left opposition has backed Napolitano, a former communist. Even one of Berlusconi's closest allies, parliament speaker Gianfranco Fini, said he was deeply concerned about the clash between the prime minister and the head of state.

Berlusconi is now hoping to rush through parliament, where he has a comfortable majority, a draft bill barring doctors from stopping nutrition to comatose patients.

Englaro's case has been compared to that of Terri Schiavo, the American woman who was allowed to die in 2005 after a long legal battle.

Englaro's father has battled his way through Italy's courts for more than 10 years, saying that, before the accident, she had stated her wish not to be kept alive artificially.

This week he took her to a new hospice which has agreed to stop nutrition, after several clinics turned him down fearing retaliation.

Medical experts say it could take around two weeks for Englaro to die. Most say she would feel no pain.