Donald Trump is overriding the Pope

A catholic infant in Britain has an incurable disease that prevents all movement and will kill the baby who is unable to breath. Charlie, who will be 11 months old on July 4, has a rare genetic condition and resulting brain damage that has robbed him of his ability to move his arms and legs, eat or even breathe on his own.

The infant has suffered irreversible brain damage and will not be able to function even if kept alive.  The hospital has decided to terminate life support.  In the meantime, without continuous care, the baby will suffer a painful death.  The family wants to remove the baby from the hospital so he can die at home or take the infant to  the US for an experimental therapy the doctors say will not  work.

The Pope advised that compassion for the child means letting it die in the care of the hospital. Trump has offered to take it to the US.   European courts have decided that he could be removed from life support against his parents’ wishes.

The Vatican said “we must do what advances the health of the patient, but we must also accept the limits of medicine” and “avoid aggressive medical procedures that are disproportionate to any expected results or excessively burdensome to the patient or the family.”

“Likewise, the wishes of parents must be heard and respected, but they too must be helped to understand the unique difficulty of their situation and not be left to face their painful decisions alone,” Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia wrote.

“If the relationship between doctor and patient (or parents as in Charlie’s case) is interfered with, everything becomes more difficult and legal action becomes a last resort, with the accompanying risk of ideological or political manipulation, which is always to be avoided, or of media sensationalism, which can be sadly superficial.”