A Vatican official is condemning Brittany Maynard, the terminally ill woman who ended her own life in Oregon Saturday through physician-assisted suicide.

Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula called Maynard's assisted suicide "an absurdity." He spoke about Brittany's decision to the Italian news agency ANSA on Tuesday.

"This woman [took her own life] thinking she would die with dignity, but this is the error," the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life said, according to a translation by Reuters.

"Suicide is not a good thing. It is a bad thing because it is saying no to life and to everything it means with respect to our mission in the world and toward those around us."

The 29-year-old woman died by taking medication prescribed by her doctor weeks after her journey in ending her life became a national topic.

Maynard became a national advocate for Death with Dignity laws.

Compassion & Choices, a group working to expand the Death with Dignity option, publicized her fight for the right to her own life.

This group is one of the many advocates who believe that terminally ill patients who decide to end their lives on their own terms should not have their deaths labeled as suicide.

"There is not a cell in my body that is suicidal or that wants to die," Maynard told People Magazine. "I want to live. I wish there was a cure for my disease, but there's not."

She was diagnosed with brain cancer and doctors predicted that she only had a few months to live.

Board member of Compassion & Choices Rev. Dr. Ignacio Castuera said in a statement that Brittany was not Catholic.

"People of faith are free to follow their own beliefs and consciences," the statement read. "But it is wrong to use the police power of government to impose a set of religious beliefs on people who do not share them. It is not the American way."

Brittany was an only child.