A new and strong appeal against the death penalty comes from Pope Francis in a post on his X account in nine languages @Pontifex: “The #DeathPenalty is always unacceptable because it violates the inviolability and dignity of the person. I call for it to be abolished in all countries of the world. We cannot forget that, until the last moment, a person can convert and change.”
Executions on the rise in 2023
Since the first years of his pontificate, Francis has stigmatized a practice that is still widespread in several countries around the world. According to the latest data provided by organizations active against the death penalty, led by Amnesty International, the number of executions recorded in 2023 is the highest in almost a decade. Despite this increase, the number of States carrying out death sentences has reached an all-time low: only 16. In particular, after Iran, the countries with the highest number of executions are Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Pakistan.
The modification of the Catechism
Francis had approved in 2018 a modification of the text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penalty. “The Church teaches in the light of the Gospel – reads a passage of the document – that the death penalty is inadmissible because it violates the inviolability and dignity of the person, and is resolutely committed to its abolition throughout the world.”
The preface to Dale Recinella’s book
A call by the Pope against the death penalty, defined bluntly as a “poison” for society, dates back to last August. Words spoken in black and white by the Pontiff in the signed preface for the book, published by Lev, “A Christian on death row. My commitment to the condemned,” by Dale Racinella, a former Wall Street financial lawyer who, together with his wife Susan, assists prisoners in Florida. “The death penalty is in no way the solution to the violence that can befall innocent people. Executions, far from doing justice, feed a feeling of revenge that becomes a dangerous poison for the body of our civilized societies,” the Pontiff notes in the text. “States should be concerned with giving prisoners the opportunity to truly change their lives, instead of investing money and resources in repressing them, as if they were human beings who no longer deserve to live and who must be disposed of.”
The 2019 video message for the World Congress against the Death Penalty
Words that echo what Pope Francis has always said in a 2019 video message sent to participants in the 7th World Congress against the Death Penalty, which took place in Brussels, at the headquarters of the European Parliament. The dignity of the person is never lost, even when “the worst of crimes” is committed, the Pontiff affirmed; life is a gift to be protected and is “the source of all other gifts and all other rights”: “We can never abandon the conviction of offering even the guilty the possibility of repentance”.
