Relic of Saint John Paul II stolen from historic basilica

Roger Foley enjoys taste-testing three different kinds of hummus, his favourite food, on the day of a video shoot with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project in Canada. The two spoke about Foley’s difficulty accessing quality care for his needs and being offered Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) “several times.” / Courtesy of Amanda Achtman

CNA Staff, Jun 23, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Amid ongoing efforts to expand euthanasia in Canada under the name of “medical aid in dying” (MAID), one Ottawa man says he has been offered euthanasia “multiple times” as he struggles with lifelong disabilities and chronic pain from a disease called cerebellar ataxia. 

Roger Foley, 49, shared some of his story in a recent video interview with Amanda Achtman of the Dying to Meet You project, which was created to “humanize our conversation on suffering, death, meaning, and hope.” The project seeks to “[restore] our cultural health when it comes to our experiences of death and dying” through speaking engagements and video campaigns. 

In the video, the fourth of a series, Foley said he has struggled with subpar medical help in his own home, where he is supposed to be getting quality care. Canada has a nationalized health care system but Foley said that individuals with illnesses are “worked at … not worked with.” He spoke out against being devalued as he fights for the support he needs to live.

In one case, he said, a home worker helped him into his bathtub and then fell asleep in the other room; Foley was left to crawl out of the bathroom on his own. “I reported to the agency, and then he confessed, and the agency, they really didn’t care,” he said.

Asked by Achtman if he has ever been offered euthanasia, Foley said: “Yeah, multiple times.”

“One time, [a doctor] asked me, ‘Do you have any thoughts of self-harm?’ I’m honest with them and tell them I do think about ending my life because of what I’m going through, being prevented from the resources that I need to live safely back at home.” 

“From out of nowhere, he just pulls out, ‘Well, if you don’t get self-directing funding, you can always apply for an assisted.’”

Foley said the offers from doctors to help end his life have “completely traumatized me.”

“Now it’s this overlying option where in my situation, when I say I’m suicidal, I’m met with, ‘Well, the hospital has a program to help you with that if you want to end your life.’”

“That didn’t exist before [MAID] was legalized, but now it’s there,” he said. “There is not going to be a second within the rest of my life that I’m not going to have flashbacks to [being offered suicide]. The devaluing of me and all that I am.”

Noting that he’s “not religious,” Foley said: “Saying that it’s just religious persons who oppose euthanasia in society is completely wrong.”

“These people who usually say it, they have an ableist mindset,” he said. “And they look at persons with disabilities and see us as just better off dead and a waste of resources.”

Achtman told CNA there is a need for euthanasia-free health care spaces, not only for protecting the integrity of Catholic institutions but also because many patients — including nonreligious patients like Foley — want to be treated in facilities that do not raise euthanasia with patients. 

“Having euthanasia suggested, in a sense, already kills the person. It deflates a person’s sense of confidence that doctors and nurses are going to truly fight for them,” Achtman told CNA. “When euthanasia is suggested ostensibly as one ‘treatment’ option among others, there are all-too-frequently no other real options provided.

She continued: “This is why I always say that a request for euthanasia is not so much an expression of a desire to die as it is an expression of disappointment. Responding to such disappointment with real interventions that are adequate to the person is demanding, but that’s what people deserve. It is wrong to concede or capitulate to a person’s suicidal ideation — instead, every person deserves suicide prevention rather than suicide assistance.”

Canada has become one of the most permissive countries in the world when it comes to euthanasia. The country first began allowing doctors to help kill terminally ill patients nearing death in 2016; the law was then expanded in 2021 to include patients whose death is not imminent.

In February the country paused a proposal to allow mentally ill individuals access to MAID, with the proposal set to be reconsidered in 2027. Earlier this year, Canadian health researchers alleged that MAID will “save” the Canadian health care system between $34.7 and $136.8 million per year.

A couple in British Columbia is currently suing the provincial government, as well as a Catholic health care provider, after their daughter was denied euthanasia while suffering from a terminal illness. The suit demands that the government remove the religious exemption from the Catholic hospital that protects them from having to offer MAID.

A judge in March, meanwhile, ruled that a woman with autism could be granted her request to die by MAID, overruling efforts by the woman’s father to halt the deadly procedure.

Asked what gives him hope, Foley told Achtman that he aspires one day to “be able to break through [the health care system] and get access to the resources that I need and to live at home with workers who want to work with me and I want to work with them and that we can work as a team.” 

“I have a passion to live,” he said. “I don’t want to give up my life.”

Zoe Romanowsky contributed to this story.

[…]

Managua, Nicaragua, Nov 23, 2019 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- Parishioners holding vigil at a church to pray for detained foes of President Daniel Ortega came under attack from supporters of the government on Thursday.
 
The attackers used clubs, machetes, and metal bars in a Nov. 21 attack at a church in Masaya, about 20 miles southeast of Nicaragua’s capital of Managua.
 
“They came with pipes and machetes, they beat the altar boys and a woman and they had us surrounded in here,” said Father Harving Madina, parish priest of Masaya’s San Juan Bautista Church, the Associated Press reports.
 
Madina and parishioners at  San Juan Bautista had planned to march a few blocks to a nearby church, San Miguel, which is surrounded by pro-government groups. The march was intended to show support for its priest and parishioners on hunger strike seeking the release of relatives they say are political prisoners.
 
Their relatives were detained during protests against Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega.
 
A hostile group surrounded San Juan Bautista church as Mass was being celebrated, Father Madina said. The group tried to break through the doors as priests and parishioners used pews to barricade the entrance.
 
One 50-year-old parishioner who tried to stop the assailants was beaten by several people who then handed him over to onlooking police, who did not intervene during the disturbance.
 
Anti-government protests in Nicaragua began in April 2018. The crackdown from security forces and pro-government militias resulted in more than 320 deaths last year, with 2,000 injured and tens of thousands fleeing the country as refugees.
 
Modest pension reforms triggered the unrest but protests quickly turned to objections to what critics said was Ortega’s authoritarian bent.
 
Ortega, who previously led the country for over a decade after the Sandinistas’ 1979 ouster of the Somoza dictatorship, has been president of Nicaragua since 2007, and oversaw the abolition of presidential term limits in 2014.
 
The Catholic Church had suggested that the elections scheduled for 2021 be held this year, but Ortega has ruled this out.
 
Ortega’s backers have said that a demand for the president to leave office early and to hold early elections are tantamount to a coup attempt. Some have labeled the protesters as terrorists, the Associated Press reports.
 
Ortega’s government has accused many bishops and priests of supporting the opposition.
 
Rosario Murillo, Nicaragua’s vice president and Ortega’s wife, criticized “those who claim to speak in the name of the faith,” calling them “repugnant wolves who spread hatred.”
 
The San Miguel protest vigil began Nov. 14. Authorities cut off electricity and water to the church. The National Police surrounded the building, threatening to enter by force to end the demonstration.
 
Thirteen people who tried to bring water to the demonstrators Nov. 14 were arrested. They were charged Nov. 18 with weapons transport. Police say the 13 people were carrying guns and bombs, and charged that they intended to “continue carrying out terrorist acts … against police buildings, city halls and monuments.”
 
A group of priests tried to enter San Miguel church Nov. 15, but police held them back. The health of at least three protesters there is reported to be in decline.
 
Cardinal Leopoldo José Brenes Solorzano of Managua has condemned the National Police’s “siege and intimidation” of the Masaya hunger strikers and their pastor, Fr. Edwin Román.
 
The cardinal called on the national police to respect “the free movement to demonstrate” and “the exercise of religious freedom.”
 
On Nov. 18 a different pro-government group invaded Managua’s Immaculate Conception Cathedral to pursue seven mothers of detained anti-Ortega protesters who had entered the cathedral to pray.
 
The mothers removed themselves to another part of the cathedral.
 
According to the archdiocese, a violent group “related to the government” entered and took control of the cathedral. When a priest and a nun tried to rebuke them, members of the mob beat them. The two were not seriously injured but had to leave the church to protect themselves.
 
Msgr. Carlos Avilés, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Managua, said the group was backed by the police.
 
The mothers took shelter in the cathedral overnight, and were then evacuated Nov. 19 in a Red Cross ambulance, as part of a deal negotiated by Archbishop Waldemar Sommertag, apostolic nuncio to Nicaragua. The invading group later gave up control of the cathedral.
 
The Nicaraguan bishops’ conference expressed “profound concern” Nov. 19 over the “indifference of the state for the rights of Nicaraguans who are expressing their sorrow and their needs.”
 
The bishops called on “those responsible for these sieges to change their stance.”
 
Nicaraguans have suffered too much pain,” they continued. “The besieged families suffer doubly: the lack of freedom for their incarcerated family members and, now, the state of siege that threatens their lives. We call on the government to hear their petitions which are at the same time their rights.”
 
The Managua archdiocese also asked Ortega to “take immediate action that all our Catholic churches are respected.”

[…]

Newly inaugurated President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum. / Credit: Government of Mexico

Puebla, Mexico, Oct 1, 2024 / 17:15 pm (CNA).
On the occasion of Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo’s Oct. 1 inauguration as president of Mexico, the Catholic Church m… […]