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Pope Francis delivers a speech at Laeken castel on September 27, 2024, in Brussels, BelgiumPhoto by Sébastien Courdji/Getty Images

(LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has once again called for an end to the death penalty, describing the practice as “always inadmissible” and appealing for its “abolition in all countries of the world.”

In an October 10 post on his official X (formerly Twitter) account to commemorate “European and World Day against the Death Penalty,” the Pope wrote that the “death penalty is always inadmissible, because it attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person. I appeal for its abolition in all countries of the world. We must not forget that a person can repent and change, even up until the very last moment of their life.”

In contrast with the Pope’s description of the death penalty as “inadmissible” and an attack on the “dignity of the person,” the Catholic Church has always taught – through the Magisterium, popes, saints, theologians, and scholars – that the state reserves the right, in natural law and according to Sacred Scripture (Gen 9:6), to execute criminals.

In 1955 Pope Pius XII defended the authority of the state to punish crimes, including with the death penalty. He argued that capital punishment is morally defensible in every age and culture since “the coercive power of legitimate human authority” is based on “the sources of revelation and traditional doctrine.”

Indeed, St. Thomas Aquinas, in his classic defense of capital punishment in the Summa Theologiæ, argued that “if a man be dangerous and infectious to the community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good.”

Catholic authors Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette outline the historic Catholic teaching regarding the death penalty in their joint work, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment.

The Pope’s repudiation of capital punishment has been a recurring theme of his 11-year pontificate. From at least 2016, the Pope has publicly stated his opposition to the death penalty on the grounds that it contradicts the decalogue, in that the “Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty.”

The following year, Francis called the death penaltyper se contrary to the Gospel” since it “entails the willful suppression of a human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its Creator and of which – ultimately – only God is the true judge and guarantor.”

Later, in 2018, the Pope took to formalizing his statement against state-sanctioned killing of the guilty by having the Catechism of the Catholic Church entry on the death penalty altered (citing his own 2017 remarks) to remove language which, at minimum, affirmed that the Church “does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

The Pope then declared that capital punishment is “an attack on the … dignity of the person”; as a result, entry n. 2267 now reads:

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.

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

Thereafter the Pope has taken numerous opportunities to make calls for the “abolition” of the death penalty in today’s world, in contradiction with the perennial teaching of the Catholic Church, even acknowledging that the Church has historically upheld the liceity of the death penalty.

In 2022 the Pontiff requested Catholics to “pray that the death penalty, which attacks the dignity of the human person, may be legally abolished in every country,” adding his opinion that the practice is “not necessary” since it “offers no justice to victims, but rather encourages revenge.” And just last year Francis repeated his claim that the death penalty is “always inadmissible since it attacks the inviolability and the dignity of the person” in comments to the diplomatic corps of ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.

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