The Vatican newspaper today called the US courts in the Terri Schiavo case "executioners" for not allowing the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube to be restored.
"So far, along her painful path, Terri seems to have met with a series of executioners - from those who first decided to make her die to the judges who have now signed her death sentence," the Osservatore Romano said.
Five days after Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube was removed under a state court order, a three-judge panel of the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected her parents' appeal against a refusal by a U.S. district judge to order the feeding resumed.
The Vatican newspaper said the Atlanta decision was "a new painful station in the personal Calvary of Terri Schiavo".
This was a reference to the "stations of the cross", a traditional Christian procession that marks the events in the last hours of Christ's life.
"In the meantime, unaware of the cacophony around her story - in which the media has had its own role - Terri dies in silence," the paper said.
Bob and Mary Schindler's fight to keep their daughter alive - against the wishes of her husband and legal guardian - has become a cause celebre for evangelical Christians and anti-abortion activists and has won support from the Republican-led U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush.