Orthodox Church Patriarch Calls Death Penalty Incompatible with Christian Beliefs

The leader of the world’s sec­ond largest Christian denom­i­na­tion has joined with the Roman Catholic Church in declar­ing the death penal­ty fun­da­men­tal­ly incom­pat­i­ble with Christian teach­ings. In an inter­view with Vatican News on October 20, 2020, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, called oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty ​“the log­i­cal and moral con­se­quence” of adher­ence to Christian prin­ci­ples of human dignity. 

The Orthodox patriarch’s com­ments came dur­ing a vis­it to Rome for a prayer meet­ing for peace with Pope Francis. Asked for his views on the Roman Catholic pontiff’s recent papal encycli­cal, Fratelli Tutti: on Fraternity and Social Friendship, Patriarch Bartholomew praised the pope’s writ­ings, say­ing ​“We com­plete­ly agree with the call-chal­lenge of His Holiness to aban­don the indif­fer­ence or even cyn­i­cism that gov­erns our eco­log­i­cal, polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and social life in gen­er­al.” The patri­arch called on all peo­ple to work to cre­ate a world of ​“a unit­ed human fam­i­ly in which we are all broth­ers and sis­ters without exception.”

On cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Bartholomew said “[t]he atti­tude of a soci­ety toward the death penal­ty is an indi­ca­tor of its cul­tur­al ori­en­ta­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion of human dig­ni­ty.” He said, “[t]he wor­thy sys­tem of European con­sti­tu­tion­al cul­ture, of which one of the fun­da­men­tal pil­lars is the idea of love as an expres­sion of its Christian beliefs, requires us to con­sid­er that every man must be giv­en the pos­si­bil­i­ty of repen­tance and improve­ment, even if he has been con­demned for the worst crime.”

“It is there­fore a log­i­cal and moral con­se­quence that one who con­demns war also should reject the death penal­ty,” the patriarch said.

The Fratelli Tutti, pub­lished October 3, 2020 by Pope Francis, told Roman Catholics there is ​“no step­ping back” from the Church’s oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Bartholomew called the encycli­cal ​“the crown­ing and hap­py con­clu­sion of all social doc­trine,” embrac­ing the Christian val­ues of “[l]ove, open­ness to the oth­er and the cul­ture of solidarity.” 

Francis’ encycli­cal reject­ed the death penal­ty as a ​“false answer[] that … ulti­mate­ly do[es] no more than intro­duce new ele­ments of destruc­tion in the fab­ric of nation­al and glob­al soci­ety” and called on “[a]ll Christians and peo­ple of good will” to work for ​“the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, legal or ille­gal, in all its forms.”