Archdiocese of Montreal suing Québec government to prevent euthanasia at St Raphael's Palliative Care Home.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

The euthanasia lobby wants to force every Canadian medical institution, including religiously affiliated institutions, to kill their patients by euthanasia.

St Raphael's Palliative Care Home

On December 2, 2023 I wrote that the St. Raphael Palliative Care Home and Day Centre signed an agreement with the Archdiocese of Montreal guaranteeing that St Raphael's would provide end-of-life care but never provide euthanasia. St Raphael's was now being forced by the Quebec government to provide euthanasia.

The Québec government passed Bill 11 on June 7, 2023 a bill that, among other things, required that every palliative care institution in Québec provide euthanasia.

An article by Stephanie Marin that was published by LeDevoir on February 6, 2024 reports that the Archdiocese of Montréal is suing the Québec government since the government is not willing to provide a euthanasia exemption for St. Raphael Palliative Care Home. According to the article (google translated):

The Archbishop of Montreal asked the court to invalidate the recent addition to the law that requires all palliative care homes to offer medical assistance in dying, the End-of-Life Care Act: such a provision would be contrary to freedom of religion, and therefore unconstitutional. The high ecclesiastical authority thus seeks to prevent a Catholic place of worship converted into an end-of-life care home, on land still belonging to the Church in Montreal, from being forced to offer a procedure contrary to its values ​​and to “the law of God”.

“We ask the Court to recognize that it is contrary to our freedom of religion and conscience guaranteed by the Canadian and Quebec Charters to require that, on our property, acts be committed which are, in our eyes, morally unacceptable ", declared the Archbishop of Montreal, Christian Lépine.

An exemption to the Act was requested from the Minister of Health last September, but it was refused, it is alleged.

The lawsuit states that the Charities of the Archdiocese of Montreal own the land that St Raphael's was built upon. When the Archdiocese closed the parish in that location in 2008 it sought out another use of the land.

 

Letter from the Archdiocese of Montreal: Palliative Care at a Crossroads. (Link)

In 2019, the Archdiocese signed a 100 year agreement with St Raphael Palliative Care House enabling them to rent the land for $1 per year under the condition that euthanasia would not be administered there. In 2019 the Québec law gave Palliative Care institutions a choice as to whether they would provide euthanasia or not. Bill 11 changed the law and now requires St Raphael's to provide euthanasia.

Archbishop Lepine, the Archbishop of Montréal, expressed that this is an untenable situation. He told Marin that:

either he must give up supporting the Maison St-Raphaël, or he must accept that his property, a former church, is used to commit acts that are “morally unacceptable.”

St Paul's Hospital in Vancouver

A similar situation is happening with St Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. An article by Thomas McKenna that was published in the National Review on February 3, 2024 explains that Dying with Dignity Canada and a group of law professors, intend to sue St Paul's Hospital in Vancouver with the intention of forcing all Catholic Hospitals in Canada to provide euthanasia (MAiD) on their premises.