Eluana Englaro, the comatose woman at the centre of a euthanasia debate that has divided Italy and sparked a constitutional crisis, died last night at the age of 38, four days after doctors began to remove her life support.

“May the Lord welcome her and pardon those who brought her to this point,” a senior Vatican official said.

The news of Ms Englaro’s death came as the Upper House of parliament began debating emergency legislation rushed out by the centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi. It would have ordered medical staff to restore all nutrients. She had been in a vegetative state for 17 years after a car accident.

Ms Englaro’s father, Beppino Englaro, had been fighting for a decade for a dignified end to his daughter’s life in accordance with what he and her friends have testified were her own wishes. At his request doctors at a clinic in Udine stopped feeding Ms Englaro on Friday.

The news of Ms Englaro’s death was given first to her father by Amato De Monte, the anaesthetist at the Udine clinic. “Yes, she has left us,” Mr Englaro announced.

The Senate interrupted the debate and observed a minute’s silence as a mark of respect. After the silence came recriminations. “She didn’t die. She was killed,” Gaetano Quagliarello, a centre-right senator, shouted, while others screamed “murderers, murderers” towards the Opposition benches.

Mr Berlusconi’s law would make it illegal for carers of people “unable to take care of themselves” to suspend artificial feeding. Euthanasia is illegal in Italy but refusing treatment is not.

The Prime Minister expressed “deep pain and regret” that he had failed to save Ms Englaro’s life but government officials vowed to push the Bill through. “I hope the Senate can proceed on the established calendar so that this sacrifice wasn’t completely in vain,” Maurizio Sacconi, the Health Minister, told legislators minutes after she died.

Mr Berlusconi drew up the Bill after President Napolitano refused to sign an emergency decree last week on constitutional grounds. Mr Napolitano said that the decree contradicted a Supreme Court ruling last November that gave Ms Englaro’s father permission to find doctors who would end her life.

The Vatican and Roman Catholic Church had opposed the ruling fiercely and were swift to respond to news of Ms Englaro’s death. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, the Vatican Health Minister, said: “I will continue to regard her death as a crime.” Earlier Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the Italian Episcopal Conference, declared that refusing food and water to Ms Englaro was murder. “A light is going out, the light of a life,” he said.

For the third day in succession Pope Benedict XVI referred indirectly to the case, declaring yesterday that “the sanctity of life must be safeguarded from conception to its natural end”.

The tussle over Ms Englaro’s life has revived accusations that the Vatican is dictating Italian politics. Mr Berlusconi, who had previously stayed out of the controversy, reportedly reacted after Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, implored him to “stop this crime against humanity”.

In response to accusations that he was bowing to pressure from the Church, the Prime Minister said that he represented the feelings of most Italians. Opinion polls suggested that Italians were divided, with 47 per cent in favour of Ms Englaro’s right to die, 47 per cent against and 6 per cent undecided.

Ms Englaro’s longtime neurologist, Carlo Alberto Defanti, predicted last week that his patient could remain alive for another eight to ten days. “During the first week without food and water, Eluana won’t run a big risk,” Dr Defanti said in an interview published yesterday. “Her physical condition is excellent. Probably . . . she will resist for longer than average. Apart from her brain injuries Eluana is a healthy woman. She has never been ill and never taken antibiotics.”

Dr Defanti admitted last night that Ms Englaro’s death had come more swiftly than expected. “It was something we did not foresee,” he said.

Ms Englaro was called “Italy’s Terri Schiavo”, in reference to the American woman in a vegetative state who was allowed to die in 2005 after a long legal fight. Mr Englaro battled his way through Italy’s courts for ten years to have her feeding tube disconnected, saying that it was her wish not to be kept alive artificially.

Rome’s right-wing mayor, Gianni Alemanno, announced that the Colosseum would be lit all night in a sign of mourning for “a life that could have and should have been saved”.

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