On August 2, 2018, the Vatican announced that it had for­mal­ly changed the offi­cial Catechism of the Catholic Church on the death penal­ty, call­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“an attack on the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty of the per­son” and deem­ing it ​“inad­mis­si­ble” in all cases.

The Catechism — the Catholic Church’s offi­cial com­pi­la­tion of teach­ings on a wide range of issues — was revised to unam­bigu­ous­ly oppose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The new ver­sion of Catechism No. 2267 also com­mit­ted the Church to work ​“with deter­mi­na­tion” to abol­ish the death penal­ty world­wide. Prior to the revi­sion, the Catechism had used soft­er lan­guage on the death penal­ty, per­mit­ting it ​“if this is the only pos­si­ble way of effec­tive­ly defend­ing human lives against the unjust aggres­sor,” while not­ing that ​“the cas­es in which the exe­cu­tion of the offend­er is an absolute neces­si­ty ​‘are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.’”

The text of the new Catechism is set forth below.

RESCRIPTUM ​“EX AUDIENTIA SS.MI”
(approved trans­la­tion)

The death penalty 

2267. 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”,i and she works with deter­mi­na­tion for its abolition worldwide. 

i FRANCIS, Address to par­tic­i­pants in the meet­ing organ­ised by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation, 11 October 2017: L’Osservatore Romano, 13 October 2017, 5.

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