By NICOLE WINFIELD ROME - A doctor alleged Wednesday that Pope John Paul II violated Catholic teaching against euthanasia by refusing medical care that would have kept him alive longer - a charge immediately dismissed by Vatican officials. In an article in the Italian journal Micromega, Dr.

An Italian doctor who helped a terminally ill man die has been cleared of consensual murder charges by a court in Rome.

ROME - Italian prosecutors on Tuesday cleared a physician who disconnected the respirator of a paralyzed man who had asked to die, a patients advocate group said. Dr.

Piergiorgio Welby, a renowned Italian poet who had eloquently begged Italy's leaders to let him end his life legally, died Dec. 20 after a doctor sedated him and removed a respirator that had kept him alive for nine years. Welby, 60, suffered from muscular dystrophy for 40 years.

A funeral of an Italian man mired in a euthanasia controversy drew hundreds of people Sunday outside a Roman Catholic church that refused to have the services.