Doctors on Monday started shutting down the life support of a Frenchman who has been in a vegetative state for a decade prompting a right to die row that has split the patient’s family and France.

The decision has also prompted apparent criticism from the Pope.

The fate of Vincent Lambert, 42, who was left quadriplegic and with irreversible brain damage after a traffic accident in 2008, has also turned political as candidates for this weekend’s European elections clash over whether he should be kept alive.

The case has pitted his parents, devout Catholics, against Mr Lambert's wife and five siblings who argue he should be allowed to die, and who suggest that he had even expressed such a desire.

Doctors started switching off his life support at the Sebastopol Hospital in the northern French city of Reims following a final judicial ruling to halt nutrition and hydration. Without these, he could die "within days”, said medical sources.

Jean Paillot, the lawyer for Mr Lambert's parents, had said he would seek to reverse the decision at the Paris court of appeal and the criminal court of Reims.