Catholic woman with schizophrenia being held for blasphemy in Indonesia 

Sydney, Australia, Nov 15, 2017 / 11:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Following a postal survey showing support for same-sex marriage, Australia’s Catholic bishops said that the nation’s laws need to protect those who understand marriage as it has a… […]

Melbourne, Australia, Jul 24, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- The first permit for medically assisted death in Victoria was issued in recent weeks, less than a month after the Australian state’s legalization of voluntary assisted suicide and euthanasia took effect.

The Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 allows adult Victoria residents who are terminally ill, expected to die within six months (or 12 if they have a neurodegenerative condition), and mentally competent, to ask their doctor to prescribe drugs that will end their lives. The law took effect June 19.

Two doctors must verify the requester’s eligibility, and the person must make three requests for assisted suicide or euthanasia. Those seeking to end their lives must have lived in Victoria for at least a year, and be an Australian citizen or permanent resident.

Neither the identity nor the medical condition of the person granted a permit to commit suicide have been released.

A spokesperson for the Victorian health department told the ABC that the state’s “model for the voluntary assisted dying system is working.”

“We know that doctors are talking to patients about voluntary assisted dying and are carrying out assessments.”

Under the law, pharmacists at The Alfred Hospital will prepare and supply the mixture of drugs. They will deliver to the terminally ill the dose of about 100mL of liquid in a locked box with a key.

The box will include instructions on how to mix and drink the drugs, “and there is no expiry date on when the drugs can be consumed,” Melbourne daily The Age reported in June.

Physicians will be allowed to administer the drugs via an intravenous drip to those incapable of swallowing.

Health practicioners are granted conscientious objection rights against participation in euthanasia or assisted suicide under the law.

About 100 doctors across the nearly 92,000 square mile state “have began receiving the mandatory training required to be allowed to assist terminally ill patients who need medical help to die,” according to The Age.

A review board of 13 medical and legal experts will review assisted suicide-euthanasia applications after the fact to ensure compliance with the law. The board will also be able to recommend improvements to the state government, and refer breaches to police, coronors, or the Australian Health Practicioner Regulation Agency.

The Victorian health minister, Jenny Mikakos, has said the state expects about a dozen people to utilize assisted suicide or euthanasia during the first year the law is in effect. She expects this number to top out at about 150 people each year. There are about 6.5 million Victorian residents.

Efforts to expand access to assisted suicide and euthanasia have grown in recent years. Presently, at least one of the practices is legal in nine US states and the District of Columbia, as well as in all Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Colombia.

Victoria is the only Australian jurisdiction where assisted suicide or euthanasia are legal.

Advocates for assisted suicide and euthanasia have said the eligibility requirements are too onerous, and intend to challenge them in court, but do hope other Australian states will follow Victoria’s lead.

Queensland and Western Australia are considering similar bills.

New South Wales rejected such a bill in 2017, as did the national parliament in 2016, and that of Tasmania in 2013.

The Northern Territory legalized assisted suicide in 1995, but the Australian parliament overturned the law two years later.

The four Latin rite ordinaries in Victoria wrote a pastoral letter denouncing the state’s “new, and deeply troubling chapter of health care” when the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 took effect.

In a June 14 letter, the bishops of Melbourne, Ballarat, Sale, and Sandhurst wrote that “We cannot cooperate with the facilitation of suicide, even when it seems motivated by empathy or kindness.”

“What is being referred to as ‘VAD’ is a combination of what in plain- speaking is more commonly known as physician assisted suicide and euthanasia,” they said.

“We feel a responsibility not just to say ‘no’ to VAD, but to give every encouragement to model a way of life that renders VAD unnecessary.”

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Melbourne, Australia, Sep 17, 2019 / 04:32 am (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell Tuesday submitted an application for leave to appeal his conviction to the Australian High Court, following the Aug. 21 decision by the Court of Appeal in Victoria to uphold his conviction for child sexual abuse.

The leave to appeal was filed in Melbourne by Pell’s legal team Sept. 17, one day before the deadline of 28 days from the date of the Appeal Court decision.

Sources close to the cardinal told CNA Aug. 26 that Pell would be exercising his final appeal and that, while the majority of “special leave to appeal” cases were not granted by the High Court, his case would likely be accepted given the controversy triggered by the split decision of the Appeal Court judgement.

In seeking to take his case to the High Court in Canberra, Australia’s supreme court, Pell is exercising his last legal avenue to overturn a conviction which has divided opinion in the country and internationally.

Several Australian media outlets have reported that Pell will retain the same legal team which presented his case in Victoria, led by Brett Walker SC.

The cardinal was convicted Dec. 11, 2018, on five charges that he sexually abused two choristers after Sunday Mass while he was Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996 and 1997.

He was sentenced to six years in prison, of which he must serve at least three years and eight months before being eligible to apply for parole.

The cardinal, 78, who remains an archbishop and a member of the College of Cardinals, was returned to prison immediately after court adjourned, where he has remained. Pell has not been permitted to celebrate Mass in prison.

Pell’s appeal was presented on three grounds, two of which were procedural and dismissed by all three appeal judges.

The judges were divided on Pell’s primary ground of appeal, that the decision of the jury was “unreasonable.”

At particular issue was the question of whether the jury which convicted Pell had properly weighed all of the evidence presented in his defense, or reached the determination of guilt despite the demonstration of clear “reasonable doubt” that he committed the crimes with which he was charged.

Chief Justice Anne Ferguson and Court President Chris Maxwell formed the majority in favor of rejecting Pell’s appeal that the jury verdict was unreasonable on the evidence presented, finding that it was open to the jury to find beyond “reasonable doubt about the truth of the complainant’s account.”

In an extensive dissent from the majority finding, Justice Mark Weinberg noted that the entirety of the evidence against Pell consisted of the testimony of a single accuser, whereas more than 20 witnesses were produced to testify against his narrative.

“Even the ‘reasonable possibility’ that what the witnesses who testified to these matters may have been true must inevitably have led to an acquittal,” Weinberg wrote, concluding that Pell had, in effect, been asked to establish the “impossibility” of his guilt and not merely reasonable doubt.

All three judges granted further leave to appeal on the ground of the unreasonableness of the jury’s conviction.

The decision by Pell to pursue the final legal avenue open to him means that a canonical process in Rome will be further delayed until the civil process concludes in Australia.

[…]