Italian at centre of euthanasia furore dies

Maurizio Sacconi made the announcement to senators holding an emergency session to consider a bill aimed at saving 38-year-old Englaro's life.

Doctors in Udine, northeast Italy, stopped feeding Englaro on Friday amid a flurry of efforts to stop the mercy killing, with conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused of politicising the affair.

Vatican asks for ‘forgiveness’

The Vatican reacted swiftly to the news, imploring God to "forgive" those responsible for Englaro's death.

"May the Lord welcome her and forgive those who led her there (to her death)," the Vatican's "health minister" Javier Lozano Barragan told the ANSA news agency.

Englaro's family won a lengthy court battle in November to allow her to die.

President Giorgio Napolitano refused to sign an emergency cabinet decree on Friday that would prevent doctors from withholding food from Englaro, who has been in a coma for 17 years.

Emergency debate too late

Italian senators opened a debate on emergency legislation late Monday to prevent doctors from withdrawing life support the woman.

Even though Eluana Englaro's family has won a court battle to allow her to die, members of the Senate were being asked to vote on legislation designed to force doctors to keep the 38-year-old alive.

Italy's libertarian Radical Party lodged 1,500 amendments to the bill in a bid to impede its progress through parliament, lawmakers said.

The anti-clerical party took the lead in a battle for a muscular dystrophy patient's right to die in 2006 in another high-profile case that divided Italy, where the Roman Catholic Church has a heavy influence.

Englaro's longtime neurologist Carlo Alberto Defanti predicted that Englaro could have remained alive another eight to 10 days, until February 17 to 19.

"During the first week without food and water, Eluana won't run a big risk," Defanti said in an review published Monday by the Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"Aside from her brain injuries, Eluana is a healthy woman. She has never been ill and never took antibiotics."

Death ‘the right thing’

Defanti said he felt he was doing "the right thing... I am helping a person achieve her own wish, a defenceless person who was betrayed by everyone except her father and a few other people."

An arduous legal battle ended in November after courts were satisfied that Englaro's coma was irreversible, and that she had once expressed a wish not be kept alive artificially after a friend fell into a coma after an accident.

Ongoing euthanasia debate

Englaro's case has torn predominantly Roman Catholic Italy in two, with equal numbers -- 47 percent -- wanting her to be kept alive or allowed to die, according to an opinion poll in Corriere della Sera.

While euthanasia is illegal in Italy, patients have the right to refuse care.

Englaro, however, has become a symbol for the Catholic Church in its campaign against mercy killings.

Catholic associations have mounted a vigil outside the Udine hospital, while right-to-die advocates were set to hold a rally in solidarity with Englaro's family on Monday in Florence.