The Bishop of Bayonne, Lescar, and Oloron has called on French Catholics to fast and pray on May 13 — the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima — as the French Senate debates a bill that would legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in France.
The French National Assembly passed the bill on Feb. 25 after a second reading. Titled a “right to assistance in dying,” the measure would legalize the administration of lethal medications to patients requesting them. The Senate took up the bill May 11-13.
Bishop Marc Aillet stated the timing of the Fátima feast day made the call to prayer especially urgent. He warned of the “extreme gravity” of the proposal and its “formidable moral and spiritual consequences,” arguing it seeks to “abolish the prohibition against killing.”
The bishop noted that the majority of patients who consider requesting euthanasia abandon the idea once they receive proper palliative care — and lamented the chronic underfunding of palliative services in France. He also highlighted a trajectory of growing opposition among lawmakers: the number of legislators opposed to the bill rose from 199 in May 2025 to 226 by February 2026. “It is by no means too late to act and mobilize,” he said.
Bishop Aillet personally wrote to senators urging them to vote against the measure, calling it “a major anthropological rupture,” and invited the faithful to do the same. The coincidence of the Senate vote falling on the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima — on the 109th anniversary of her first apparition — is one that French Catholics are not treating as accidental.
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