News Brief: Pope Francis Calls for Prayer to Abolish the Death Penalty

Pope Francis has issued a renewed call to ​“all peo­ple of good will to mobi­lize for the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty through­out the world,” devot­ing the September 2022 world­wide prayer inten­tion of his papa­cy to end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. In a video announc­ing his month­ly prayer inten­tion, the pon­tiff said, ​“Capital pun­ish­ment offers no jus­tice to vic­tims, but rather encour­ages revenge. And it pre­vents any pos­si­bil­i­ty of undo­ing a pos­si­ble mis­car­riage of justice.”

Pope Francis has been a strong advo­cate for end­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, revis­ing the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 to call the death penal­ty ​“an attack on the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty of the per­son” and deem­ing it ​“inad­mis­si­ble” in all cas­es. He revis­it­ed those themes in the prayer ini­tia­tive, say­ing ​“the death penal­ty is moral­ly inad­mis­si­ble, for it destroys the most impor­tant gift we have received: life.”

Society can ensure pub­lic safe­ty with­out ​“with­out defin­i­tive­ly depriv­ing the offend­ers of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of redeem­ing them­selves,” the Pope said, mak­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment unnec­es­sary as a legal tool. ​“Always, in every legal sen­tence, there must be a win­dow of hope. … Let us not for­get that, up to the very last moment, a per­son can con­vert and change,” he said.

“Each day, there is a grow­ing ​‘NO’ to the death penal­ty around the world,” Pope Francis said, describ­ing that as ​“a sign of hope” for the Church. ​“Let us pray,” he said, ​“that the death penal­ty, which attacks the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son, may be legal­ly abol­ished in every country.”