Spate of federal executions must be stopped at once

I am appalled by the spate of federal executions happening in our country. On July 14, the Trump administration restarted executions with a vengeance following a 17-year hiatus. Since then, the government has taken the lives of eight people, more than double the total number in the 57 years prior.

One female and four more male inmates are scheduled to be executed prior to the swearing-in of President-elect Joe Biden. The Death Penalty Information Center said this is the first time since 1889 that the federal government has carried out an execution in the time between a presidential election and the inauguration of a new president.

The Department of Justice has also moved to expand how it carries out federal death sentences — to include electrocution and firing squads. This all shows the callous brute force of the mentality of the Trump administration. “Clearly the Trump administration’s vengeance is insatiable,” said Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network. President-elect Joe Biden opposes the death penalty and plans to urge states to stop executions.

Pope Francis, in his recent encyclical Fratelli Tutti, warns against being “obsessed with taking revenge and destroying the other…nothing is gained this way and, in the end, everything is lost.”

I acknowledge the grief and pain of the victims and their families. I also believe the gift of life is from God alone, and we do not have the power to create or destroy it.

Sister Doreen Glynn, CSJ Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet Latham