Too much individualism in living-will (3)

(ANSA) - Rome, March 20 - Italy's bill on end-of-life issues including a living will shows an excessively "individualistic" attitude with individuals seen as "the absolute masters of a life they have not given themselves," the president of the Italian Bishops' Conference (CEI), Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, said Monday, urging changes to the bill, which he said reduced doctors to the role of "notaries".
    More Europe is needed today as long as it "does not become other than itself, than its Judaeo-Christian roots, its history, its continental identity, its plurality of traditions and cultures, its values and mission," Bagnasco said in his opening remarks to the CEI's permanent conference. Accelerating processes, he said, must not mean making traditions and cultures equal nor the search for "mediocre compromises", nor "getting round declarations and common laws, or limiting national sovereignties".
    Populism is "deceptive and seriously dangerous", Bagnasco stressed. In other remarks, Bagnasco said people want to see politics engaged with the "drama" of unemployment but "for too many years" politics has been distracted over an issue that "for very many years has cut into people's living flesh".