The Narthex

Faced with the escalating public debate on end-of-life care, the Catholic Church in Italy is undergoing one of the most dramatic theological and political reversals in its recent history. This is no longer a silent retreat or passive tolerance in the face of secularization, but a veritable genetic mutation. Led…

Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, discussed the law on assisted suicide approved last Wednesday by the Veneto Regional Council in an interview published in Avvenire on September 6. A native of Padua, Pegoraro follows the matter with particular personal engagement, offering an analysis that intertwines…

Professor Benedetto Rocchi, Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and Business Science at the University of Florence and president of the permanent observatory on abortion, expressed his astonishment about the fight against assisted suicide in Italy in an article published in La Verità on September 7, 2025. He asked,…

On November 23, Slovenia said no to euthanasia. With 53% of voters voting against and 46% in favor, Slovenians rejected a law that would have allowed terminally ill patients to receive assistance in ending their lives. This was not a narrow margin due to abstentions: Turnout reached nearly 41%, with…

United in life and dance—that's how we all remember them—Alice and Ellen Kessler were also united in their final farewell, with a double assisted suicide. Alice and Ellen Kessler, the famous German artistic duo the Kessler Twins, beloved in Italy since the 1960s, have died at the age of 89.…

The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Pope Leo XIV took advantage of his August 28 audience with a delegation of politicians from the Diocese of Créteil, France, to reaffirm the principles of the Church's sound doctrine, unchanged over time. Pope Leo XIV's speech, extraordinarily beautiful, is disarmingly clear. He…

Italy once had so-called “adult Catholics,” a term coined to describe a more liberal approach by some Catholics to ethical and social issues like abortion, aimed at distinguishing themselves from the "rigid" line of the Catholic Church. The expression "adult Catholics" was used by then-Prime Minister Romano Prodi in 2006,…

After delivering a muddled set of remarks about assisted suicide which now the Pontifical Academy for Life claims do not mean what most people think they mean, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia wants us really to believe that he was merely engaging in a thought experiment about how Italian civil law should…