The president and two vice presidents of the French bishops’ conference lamented the legalization of euthanasia in France.
The National Assembly (the French Parliament’s lower house) voted three times in favor of the legislation, and the Senate voted three times against it. The French Constitution grants the government the authority to allow the National Assembly to make the final decision on legislation in case of a stalemate; after Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu invoked the Constitution, the National Assembly passed the bill for a fourth and final time in a 291-241 vote on July 15.
“This July 15, 2026, marks a serious break in the history of our country,” said the bishops. “By choosing to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, the deputies have enshrined in French law the possibility of causing death.”
They added:
The Catholics of France will continue, with many other men and women of good will, believers or not, to serve life.
They will do it animated by the firm hope that the Gospel gives them, without a spirit of resignation or confrontation, convinced that the greatness of a society never lies in the fact of giving death to the most fragile, or allowing them to do so, but on the contrary of accompanying them, through real fraternity, to the end. For Christ, in whom they believe, came that the world might have life.