Bishops: Catholic Hospitals Must Refuse Assisted Suicide
French bishops cite the Constitutional Council's opt-out and Pope Leo XIV's 'false compassion' warning, urging charter updates before January 2027.
On Sunday, November 8, 2026, the French bishops wrote to the heads of Catholic-inspired health care institutions, telling them they must prepare to exercise their legal right not to take part in assisted suicide and euthanasia.
France’s parliament adopted an “aid in dying” law in July 2026, due to take effect in January 2027. In August, the Constitutional Council interpreted the statute as allowing health establishments not to implement “assisted dying” on their premises when that practice runs contrary to their statutes or institutional project.
Fidelity to the Holy Father’s call
The bishops pointed to Pope Leo XIV’s recent visit to France, during which he restated the Church’s opposition to assisted suicide and described it as “false compassion.” They urged institutions to “remain faithful to the Holy Father’s call by reaffirming the Church’s clear disapproval of the morally illicit acts of euthanasia and assisted suicide.”
“It is therefore urgent that your legal and administrative framework be updated (charters, statutes, internal regulations, etc.),” the letter stated. The bishops warned that a comparable establishment clause in Belgium’s 2002 law was repealed in 2020, in part because of weak management of that safeguard. The French provision “must therefore be addressed with rigor and expertise.”
Several institutions had already sought the bishops’ counsel. A comprehensive doctrinal and pastoral document is scheduled for publication in 2027. The conference stressed that it cannot replace each person’s individual discernment, and that some practical questions will depend on forthcoming implementing decrees and policy guidelines.
A hard-won statute and a call to discernment
The law advanced only after the Senate rejected it three times. The government then invoked Article 45 of the French Constitution to secure passage without Senate approval.
Archbishop Vincent Jordy of Tours, vice president of the bishops’ conference, had earlier cautioned: “It is therefore important to help our contemporaries exercise discernment so as not to be misled by a kind of ideology of progress.”
For Catholic hospitals, nursing homes, and care networks, the November letter frames a concrete duty: align statutes and internal rules with the Church’s teaching on the inviolable dignity of human life before the new regime takes effect, and use the constitutional room left open so that no Catholic-inspired facility is forced to cooperate in acts the Magisterium judges morally illicit.