Pope Leo calls assisted suicide ‘false compassion’ as veteran finds lifesaving care in America 

Pope Leo XIV called assisted suicide “false compassion” Sunday while speaking to sick people and health care workers in France.

His remarks came two days after Live Action revisited the story of Air Force veteran Kristin Logan. Her husband says Canadian doctors offered her assisted suicide before she found lifesaving cancer treatment – hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) – in the United States.

Leo spoke during a visit to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes. It’s a Catholic shrine drawing sick and disabled pilgrims.

“We must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion,” Leo said. “What is legal is not necessarily moral.”

The pope urged countries to improve palliative care and continue researching treatments. He also told sick people that illness and pain don’t take away their God-given dignity.

France’s National Assembly passed an assisted-suicide legalization bill 291-241 in July. The measure would allow some adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal drugs.

It comes as Logan’s husband, Donovan James, says his wife’s experience in Canada shows how doctors gave up on a patient who could still benefit from treatment.

Logan has both American and Canadian citizenship. She had Stage 4 ovarian cancer while living in Canada, where James says doctors told her they had no treatment that could save her.

“They lied to her and said that the HIPEC surgery wouldn’t ever save her life, but it did,” James said.

James says doctors lost Logan’s chemotherapy order, leaving her without treatment. She spoke with her Canadian oncologist by phone but never met him in person.

Her condition worsened as fluid buildup left her struggling to breathe. James says Canadian hospitals sent her home with painkillers. She later needed a wheelchair.

Logan went to Seattle, where doctors started chemotherapy and performed the HIPEC operation.

The procedure starts with surgery to remove visible cancer from the abdomen. Doctors then circulate heated chemotherapy drugs inside the abdomen to attack remaining cancer cells.

The Mayo Clinic says the treatment can help some patients live longer and cure some patients.

Logan later returned to Canada to be near her family. Another medical emergency left her at risk of sepsis, James says. He drove her back to Seattle, where doctors performed another operation.

The couple later moved to Texas so Logan could continue receiving care in the United States.

In April, James said her cancer had returned twice, but she was approaching a third remission. She had also started lifting weights again.

Canada legalized assisted suicide in 2016. The country had 16,499 assisted suicide deaths in 2024, Heartlander News reported.

In August, Heartlander News also reported on a Canadian grandmother named Brigitte Stegemann. Her family says she rejected assisted suicide because of her Christian faith, but a doctor later ended her life by lethal injection without her final verbal consent.

(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)