The Vatican (LifeNews.com) -- The Pope held a meeting with Terri Schaivo's parents on Wednesday at the Vatican. He met with them at a general audience in St. Peter's Square and they presented him with a picture of their daughter, who died in late March after a painful 13 day starvation death.

They presented Pope Benedict XVI with a framed picture of Terri featuring pictures of her both before and after her 1990 collapse.

Pope Benedict takes a strong stand against euthanasia and assisted suicide.

He's previously said the state should not "grant to some the power to violate others' fundamental right to life" because it "contradicts the democratic ideal to which it continues to appeal and undermines the very foundations on which it is built."

"By allowing the rights of the weakest to be violated, the State also allows the law of force to prevail over the force of law," the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said.

Yesterday, the Schindler family met with Vatican Cardinal Renato Martino and thanked him and other Catholic officials for speaking out on Terri's behalf in the weeks leading up to her death.

Martino decried the “woman's death as one of the most inhuman and cruel form of killing since it was by hunger and thirst."

Martino heads the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and, in February, urged U.S. courts to not allow Terri's estranged husband to remove her feeding tube.

The cardinal told them that Terri's death was death was “an insult to human dignity," according to a CBS News report.

Related web sites:
Terri Schiavo's parents - http://www.terrisfight.org