Condemning Brittany Maynard's decision to end her life, the Vatican's top ethicist described the choice as an "absurdity". Maynard opted for "death with dignity" as she was battling with a terminal form of brain cancer.
The official further said that there was no dignity in physician-assisted death.
"This woman [took her own life] thinking she would die with dignity, but this is the error. Assisted suicide is an absurdity. Dignity is something different to putting an end to your own life," Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, told Italy's ANSA news agency, ABC News reports.
"We don't judge people, but the gesture in and of itself should be condemned," Time reports.
Carrasco de Paula said that suicide was not a good thing. "It is a bad thing because it is saying no to life and to everything it means with respect to our mission in the world and towards those around us."
The 29-year-old had been married for just over a year when she was diagnosed with Stage IV glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain cancer.
"Because my tumor is so large, doctors prescribed full brain radiation. I read about the side effects: The hair on my scalp would have been singed off. My scalp would be left covered with first-degree burns. My quality of life, as I knew it, would be gone. After months of research, my family and I reached a heartbreaking conclusion: There is no treatment that would save my life, and the recommended treatments would have destroyed the time I had left," Maynard had written in an editorial in CNN weeks ago.
Maynard shifted from California to Oregon as it is one of the five states in the country where assisted suicides are allowed for terminally ill patients. Oregon's Death with Dignity Act passed in 1997, has allowed for 1,173 prescriptions, along with 752 deaths through medication ever since, Life News reports.
