SCOTLAND’S bishops have urged the nation’s Catholics to contact their MSPs citing “deep concern” over assisted suicide legislation making its way through Holyrood.

Lib Dem MSP Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill has cleared its first two parliamentary hurdles, with a final vote expected next month before parliament is dissolved for May’s elections.

In a pastoral letter, the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland said the country “stands at a moment of profound moral consequence” and called on Catholics to contact MSPs to “respectfully ask them to oppose this legislation.”

They added: “True compassion is not found in hastening death but in walking with those who suffer, ensuring they receive the medical, emotional and spiritual care that affirms their inherent worth.

“Our task as a society is not to eliminate suffering by eliminating the sufferer, but to surround every individual with love, support, and dignity until their natural end.”

Defending his Bill, which has also faced strong opposition from disability rights organisations who fear it may drive people to their deaths by societal narratives around being made to feel “a burden,” Mr McArthur argued the letter put the bishops “rather at odds with their flocks.”

He added: “Polling from YouGov has shown that 25 per cent of Roman Catholics oppose legalising assisted dying while 61 per cent are supportive.

“Allowing the choice of an assisted death for those who need it and meet the criteria is undeniably the wish of an overwhelming majority of Scots.

“It is not even close. That’s why I am urging MSPs to work with me to pass this Bill and introduce a robustly safeguarded choice that is long overdue and desperately needed.”