The Pope, since the beginning of his pontificate, has defended life in the face of use, by various states, of the death penalty, defined in the convocation bull of the 2025 Jubileo, Spes non confundit “a measure contrary to the Christian faith and that annihilates all hope of forgiveness and renewal.”
Giada Aquilino – Vatican City
In the light of the Gospel, the Church teaches that “the death penalty is always inadmissible because it injures the inviolability and dignity of the person.” In the twelve years of Francisco’s pontificate, the commitment to the abolition of this “cruel” form of inhuman punishment and practice has remained constant. It was in August 2018 when the Rescript, signed by Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reported the approval by the Pontiff of the reform of point number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Church, it was stressed at the same time, is committed to “determination” to a complete elimination worldwide.
Humiliation of personal dignity
Pope Bergoglio had already spoken about it, as in October 2017. In his speech to the participants in a meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the promotion of the new evangelization, he stressed: “We must affirm strongly that the death penalty is an inhuman measure that humiliates, in any of its forms, personal dignity.” A human life “is always sacred in the eyes of the creator” and only God “ultimately” is judge and guarantor, he reiterated. “No man, not even the murderer, ever loses his personal dignity,” because the Lord “expects the return of the Son who, knowing that he has worked badly, asks for forgiveness and begins a new life.” An emphasis that aims to indicate, therefore, that no one can be private not only of life, but also of the possibility of moral and existential redemption.
The death penalty, neither human nor Christian
The action of Pope Francis, like that of the Holy See, has never stopped. It materialized, for example, precisely among the “last”, the inmates of the Regina Coeli prison in Rome, on Holy Thursday of 2018, when during the Pope’s in coena Mass of the Pope, a breath came to “sow hope,” always. “The death penalty is not human or Christian. Every penalty,” he said, “must be open to hope, to reintegration.” That same year, gathered with the delegation of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, the Holy Father stressed that the UN resolutions on the moratorium on the use of the death penalty, with the aim of “suspend” the application of capital punish “Deliver of the initiative of universal abolition.” Revenge ».
Prayer for death sentence
At the end of last year, and therefore almost at the end of his pontificate, after the prayer of the Angelus in the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Francisco again urged the faithful: “I get to the heart to ask you all to pray for the inmates in the United States who are in the death corridor,” said the Pope, wishing the switching of the penalty that has been imposed on them. A few days later, on Christmas eve and the opening of the jubilee, the then chief of the White House, Joe Biden, announced that thirty -seven men and women convicted of death would see their penalty for the perpetual chain. For them, Francisco had asked the Lord to “save them from death.
