Rome, 11 Feb. (AKI) - An autopsy performed on the controversial 'right to die' woman, Eluana Englaro, who died in Italy on Monday has shown she died of cardiac arrest, provoked by dehydration after her feeding tubes were removed last week. The fate of 38-year-old Englaro, who had been in a vegetative state since 1992, provoked a euthanasia debate that has divided Italy and caused a constitutional crisis.

A report from experts who performed the autopsy on Eluana Englaro at the Santa Maria della Misericordia Hospital in the northeastern town of Udine was given to the Udine public prosecutor's office on Tuesday.

Englaro's father, Beppino Englaro, asked the public for privacy and peace after his daughter's death.

"I ask only for silence and nothing else. Eluana now rests in peace and I can now be silent," said Englaro (photo).

Eluana's body was due to be transferred to the cemetery in Beppino Englaro's home town of Paluzza, in the northern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. A small, private funeral will be held in her memory, rather than a religious funeral.

Senior Vatican official and president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Rino Fisichella dismissed criticism against the Catholic Church and expressed concern about the number of young people who support euthanasia.

"It is wrong to insult others and it is equally wrong to accuse Catholics of fundamentalism when they fight for life," said Fisichella in an interview with Italian daily, La Repubblica.

"There is a great reversal of values. Freedom is good, but there should also be freedom to decide against death and not in favour of death.

"Analysing the latest polls, we can see that the 18-25 age bracket asked for the death of Eluana, while the older the age, the more people were in favour of allowing her to live. This should ring some alarm bells,"

Recent opinion polls showed Italians were clearly divided over the issue with 47 percent of those surveyed in favour of Englaro's right to die and 47 percent opposed to it. Six percent were undecided.

Italian opposition leader Walter Veltroni, from the Democratic Party, indirectly attacked conservative Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi for opposing Eluana's right to die.

"What right do we have to engage in controversy, to scream, to rage, against this abysmal tragedy? We have the responsibility to make fair, humane laws," said Veltroni in a letter written to Italian daily Corriere della Sera published on Wednesday.

Prime minister Berlusconi has accused president Georgio Napolitano of making a "serious mistake" in refusing to sign a government decree to prevent doctors from removing Englaro's feeding tube last Friday.

Beppino Englaro had waged a legal battle to be allowed to have his daughter's feeding tubes removed since 1999. She has been in a coma since a 1992 car accident in the northern city of Lecco in Lombardy.

While euthanasia is illegal in Italy, refusing treatment is not.