500,000 signatures were enough, instead more than a million Italians signed the Legal Euthanasia Referendum. A result above all expectations, announced by Filomena Gallo, secretary of the Luca Coscioni association. “An extraordinary result that comes exactly 15 years after Piergiorgio Welby's letter to President Giorgio Napolitano asking for euthanasia. It was September 23, 2006 and the then President of the Republic replied hoping that the issue would be addressed in the most suitable fora ".
Since then, however, nothing has changed except the fact that public opinion has been increasingly attentive to this issue, thanks also to the power of the new media that have spread every story, and there are hundreds of them every year, similar to Welby's. Stories of pain, of families annihilated by a regulatory vacuum that the promoters of the referendum absolutely want to help fill.
The result obtained with the petition, already upon reaching 500,000 signatures, has aroused mixed reactions.
"It seemed impossible to be able to collect the minimum number of signatures in the summer and moreover in the period of Covid - wrote in a long note Maurizio Mori, professor of moral philosophy and bioethics at the University of Turin and president of the Council of Bioethics onlus - and instead in half the time the goal was reached: a miracle! Perhaps the pandemic has broken down old taboos on dying and overcome the last obstacles ».
A completely different reaction was that of the Italian Bishops' Conference: "Serious concern over the collection of signatures for the referendum that aims to decriminalize the murder of the consenting party, effectively opening up to euthanasia in our country - reads the note from August 18 - Anyone who finds himself in conditions of extreme suffering must be helped to manage pain, to overcome anguish and despair, not to eliminate his own life. Choosing death is the defeat of the human, the victory of an individualistic and nihilistic anthropological conception in which neither hope nor interpersonal relationships find more space. There is no expression of compassion in helping to die, but the Magisterium of the Church recalls that, when the end of earthly existence approaches, the dignity of the human person is specified as the right to die in the greatest possible serenity and with human dignity. and Christian that is due to her ».
