After all, similar conspiracy theories have sprung up surrounding the death of his predecessor, Pope John Paul I, so why not him?
In a provocative article, an Italian medical professor argues that Pope John Paul II didn't just simply slip away as his weakness and illness overtook him in April 2005. Intensive care specialist Dr. Lina Pavanelli has concluded that the ailing Pope's April 2 death was caused by what the Catholic Church itself would consider euthanasia. She bases this conclusion on her medical expertise and her own observations of the ailing pontiff on television, as well as press reports and a subsequent book by John Paul's personal physician. The failure to insert a feeding tube into the patient until just a few days before he died accelerated John Paul's death, Pavanelli concludes. Moreover, Pavanelli says she believes that the Pope's doctors dutifully explained the situation to him, and thus she surmises that it was the pontiff himself who likely refused the feeding tube after he'd been twice rushed to the hospital in February and March. Catholics are enjoined to pursue all means to prolong life.
The article, entitled "The Sweet Death of Karol Wojtyla" (using the Pope's birth name) appears in the latest edition of Micromega, a highbrow Italian bi-monthly that has frequently criticized the Vatican's stance on bioethics. The author, who heads the anesthesiology and intensive care therapy school at the University of Ferrara, says she decided to revisit the events around John Paul's death after the Vatican took a hard line in a controversy last year in Italy over euthanasia. Indeed her accusations are grave, questioning the Catholic Church's strictly traditional stances on medical ethics, including the dictum from John Paul's own 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae to use all modern means possible to avoid death.
Stay tuned.
