A Good Death

Human Dignity, Palliative Care and Euthanasia

A good death is the fruit of a good life. I was like you… Pray for me. This phrase, which I read in a graveyard on the island of Chiloé, can be life-changing.

Every November we are reminded that human life ends. In his new book, La buena muerte, the priest and physician, Pablo Requena Meana, Vatican delegate to the World Medical Association, shows how Christian hope illuminates this reality.

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Living happily with Life in mind

Death is one of the few unavoidable realities. Sometimes we can delay it, but sooner or later it will knock at our door. What we can choose is the way to prepare ourselves for that call, especially when illness takes possession of our existence.

Euthanasia opens the wrong door

By recommending euthanasia, some people promote the possibility of opening that door prematurely. However, no one would ask to anticipate death if they were not in a desperate situation. For humans, this way of ending suffering is crude, incompatible with our high dignity, as some modern philosophers reason.

Palliative care opens the door to hope

On the other hand, modern medicine and society as a whole have the capacity to offer something better: palliative care.

In recent years, this branch of medicine has managed to ensure that the moment of death can be lived with meaning, serenity and dignity, facing up to those symptoms that provoke anxiety and fear in the collective imagination. Thanks to this care, many people have had a “good” and humane death.

See the book in Ediciones Sígueme