New Papal Encyclical Tells Catholics There is ​‘No Stepping Back’ From Opposition to Death Penalty

A new papal encycli­cal let­ter tells Catholics around the world that “[t]here can be no step­ping back” from the Church’s for­mal oppo­si­tion to the death penalty.

Pope Francis’ October 3, 2020 encycli­cal, enti­tled Fratelli Tutti, reject­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a ​“false answer[] that … ulti­mate­ly do[es] no more than intro­duce new ele­ments of destruc­tion in the fab­ric of nation­al and glob­al soci­ety.” Citing cen­turies of death-penal­ty oppo­si­tion by lead­ing Catholic schol­ars and cler­gy and call­ing atten­tion to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of judi­cial error and the mis­use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a tool of per­se­cu­tion by auto­crat­ic regimes, Francis called upon “[a]ll Christians and peo­ple of good will” to work for ​“the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, legal or ille­gal, in all its forms.” 

The Pope cast his decree as a direct and inevitable suc­ces­sor to Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encycli­cal, Evangelium Vitae, con­demn­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“except in cas­es of absolute neces­si­ty … when it would not be pos­si­ble oth­er­wise to defend soci­ety.” Those cir­cum­stances, John Paul said, ​“are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

“Saint John Paul II stat­ed clear­ly and firm­ly that the death penal­ty is inad­e­quate from a moral stand­point and no longer nec­es­sary from that of penal jus­tice,” Francis declared. ​“There can be no step­ping back from this posi­tion. Today we state clear­ly that ​‘the death penal­ty is inad­mis­si­ble’ and the Church is firm­ly com­mit­ted to call­ing for its abolition worldwide.”

Catholic activists against the death penal­ty hailed the Pope’s pro­nounce­ment. Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, said ​“Pope Francis has lever­aged the full weight of the church’s teach­ing behind its oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” Sister Helen Prejean said the encycli­cal will ​“help end this unspeak­able suf­fer­ing and spark the Gospel of Jesus to be lived in its full­ness: restora­tion of human life, not humil­i­a­tion, tor­ture, and execution.” 

The encycli­cal, which com­mands the high­est author­i­ty of any pub­lished Catholic doc­u­ment, has offi­cial­ly put the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in the fore­front of Catholic teach­ing. The Church has a his­to­ry of oppos­ing the death penal­ty but has only recent­ly made world­wide abo­li­tion of the pun­ish­ment an offi­cial mis­sion of the church. In 1994, Pope John Paul II called for a con­sen­sus of the church to oppose the penal­ty, and in 2011 Pope Benedict XVI per­son­al­ly called for its abo­li­tion. In 2018, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was offi­cial­ly changed to say that ​“the death penal­ty is inad­mis­si­ble because it is an attack on the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty of the per­son.” Fratelli Tutti takes that teach­ing a step far­ther, stat­ing that all Catholics should per­son­al­ly work towards the abo­li­tion of the death penalty.

Although the pri­ma­ry theme of the encycli­cal was mer­cy, Pope Francis also based his state­ments about the death penal­ty in oppo­si­tion to revenge. ​“Fear and resent­ment can eas­i­ly lead to view­ing pun­ish­ment in a vin­dic­tive and even cru­el way, rather than as part of a process of heal­ing and rein­te­gra­tion into soci­ety,” he wrote.

The pope took direct aim against the use of the death penal­ty as an instru­ment of polit­i­cal dem­a­goguery and gov­ern­ment oppres­sion. He direct­ly con­nect­ed the death penal­ty with police and polit­i­cal killings, describ­ing ​“so-called extra­ju­di­cial or extrale­gal exe­cu­tions” as “[p]articularly serious.” 

“[I]n some polit­i­cal sec­tors and cer­tain media,” Francis said, ​“pub­lic and pri­vate vio­lence and revenge are incit­ed, not only against those respon­si­ble for com­mit­ting crimes, but also against those sus­pect­ed, whether proven or not, of break­ing the law. … There is at times a ten­den­cy to delib­er­ate­ly fab­ri­cate ene­mies: stereo­typed fig­ures who rep­re­sent all the char­ac­ter­is­tics that soci­ety per­ceives or inter­prets as threat­en­ing. The mech­a­nisms that form these images are the same that allowed the spread of racist ideas in their time.”

“[N]ot even a mur­der­er los­es his per­son­al dig­ni­ty,” Francis said. ​“The firm rejec­tion of the death penal­ty shows to what extent it is pos­si­ble to rec­og­nize the inalien­able dig­ni­ty of every human being and to accept that he or she has a place in this universe.”