Archbishop calls for helping those affected by floods, condemns euthanasia

He said today's holiday is needed for several reasons, primarily because of the distress that "we have experienced in recent days and that many are still experiencing". It seemed that a "dragon was let loose in nature threatening to eat everything that got into its way".

He said many had resorted to payers but some also gave in to despair. "Some died in this rampage ... Others lost the roof over their head, everything they have created in decades," he said, urging everyone to stand by them not only in these first few days but until they are able to live in peace on their own again," Zore said.

"Human sight has narrowed dangerously. People more or less see what benefits them and confirms them in the deceitful thoughts of their heart. They themselves have become the measure of all. They themselves determine who is worthy of life and who is not. They themselves determine who should be allowed to be born and also increasingly seek to determine when life should end because it is no longer worth living," Zore said.

He added that this human self does not want its desires to be perceived by anyone as selfish, inhumane, pre-civilisational and pre-Christian. "That is why these selfish criteria are wrapped up in the beautiful and sonorous words of personal autonomy, the right to make decisions about oneself and one's body and, lastly, the right to end one's life in order to put an end to horrible or unbearable suffering," he said.

Although such thinking and acting is inhumane, pre-civilisational and un-Christian, it nevertheless awakens compassion in people, often even in Christians. "In this, we remain supremely naive. We think only of the physical suffering of terminal illness. And often this suffering is not the worst. It is the suffering of the soul that is much more difficult," he said, explaining that older people suffer unbearably from the feeling of being superfluous and that God never saw any person that way.

Some 4,000 people attended today's main mass in Brezje, according to the head of the Brezje office Andreja Eržen Firšt, while at least 10,000 people are expected at the pilgrimage site throughout the day. This is no less that last year, despite the devastation in most parts of the country, she said.

The head of the pilgrimage site, Robert Bahčič, said that pilgrims from the Savinja Valley and other flood-affected areas had arrived already on Monday to express their gratitude for all the help they have been receiving and ask for more help. "We see a lot of tears of sadness but also tears of joy that people have come to the rescue," Bahčič said.

The day after the floods, he and others from the Franciscan Monastery of Brezje, the local pilgrimage office and the charity Order of Malta, went to Solčava to help.

The renovation work on the bell tower of the Basilica of St. Mary Help of Christians was suspended so that the workers and their machinery could go to the flood affected areas. "We helped in Solčava until Wednesday and saw what a disaster it is when you lose everything in five, ten minutes, and that it takes many hands to help," said Bahčič.

"Many have lost everything, but they have not lost hope," he stressed, adding that at every holy mass at Brezje they also pray for those affected and those who are helping them. The money collected during masses in all parishes across the country last Sunday, will be donated to those affected by the storm. In Brezje, almost 13,900 euros were collected.