Pope: Abolish death penalty
His critics say Scripture permits the punishment
VATICANCITY — Pope Francis has decreed that the death penalty is “inadmissible” under all circumstances and the Catholic Church should campaign to abolish it, a change in church teaching that could influence Catholic politicians and judges across the globe.
The change, announced Thursday, was hailed by anti-death penalty activists and scorned by Francis’ frequent conservative critics, who said he had no right to change what Scripture revealed andpopes have taught for centuries.
The Vatican said Francis had amended the Catechism of the Catholic Church — the compilation of official teaching — to say capital punishment can never be sanctioned because it constitutes an “attack” on the dignity of human beings.
Previously, the catechism said the church didn’t exclude recourse to capital punishment “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” Past popes have upheld that position, though St. John Paul II began urging an end to the practice and stressed that the
guilty were just as deserving of dignity as innocents.
The new teaching says the previous policy is outdated and the church should instead commit itself to working to end capital punishment.
“Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme means of safeguarding the common good,” reads the new text.
Today “there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes,” it said, adding that society now has effective ways to detain prisoners so they aren’t a threat and even provide the possibility of rehabilitation.
The death penalty has been abolished in most of Europe and South America, but it is still in use in the United States and in countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Within hours of Thursday’s announcement, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed to introduce legislation to remove the death penalty from state law.
Francis’ new teaching is likely to feature in the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a church-going Catholic who, if confirmed, would join four other Catholic justices.
Sister Helen Prejean, the anti-death penalty campaigner whose ministry to a death row inmate inspired the book and film “Dead Man Walking,” said she was “high as a kite” over Francis’ decision to close what she said were loopholes in previous church teaching that failed to recognize that when a prisoner is strapped to a gurney, he is rendered defenseless before his executioner.
“We can’t claim anymore that’s the only way you can defend society,” she said.
Francis has long denounced the death penalty and even opposes life sentences, which he has called “hidden” death sentences.
In an accompanying letter explaining the change, the head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, said the pope wasn’t contradicting prior church teaching but was “reformulating” it to express “an authentic development of doctrine.”
The Rev. Robert Gahl, a moral theologian at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University, agreed.
“With this new text the pope is not rejecting past teaching regarding the death penalty. He’s not referring to the inherent morality or immorality of it, but to political expedience within new circumstances to emphasize the possibility of redemption for all, including the most guilty,” he said.
In addition to Sister Prejean, other Catholic organizations are active in the antideath penalty campaign, including the Sant’Egidio Community, which together with Italian authorities always lights up Rome’s Colosseum whenever a country abolishes capital punishment.
In a statement Thursday, Sant’Egidio said the change served “as another push to the church and Catholics, based on the Gospel, to respect the sacredness of human life and to work at all levels and on every continent to abolish this inhuman practice.”