Death Penalty News

As the Church's liturgical readings recall Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery, the Director of the US-based Catholic Mobilizing Network explores the Lord’s rejection of capital punishment. This Sunday’s Gospel reading for Year C describes the event traditionally called the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). My friends have helped to give it new relevance for me this year. In our work at Catholic Mobilizing Network, we strive to end the death penalty, advance justice, and begin healing.

Pope Francis pens the preface to “A Christian on Death Row: My Commitment to Those Condemned ,” a new book by Dale Recinella, set for publication by the Vatican Publishing House (LEV) on August 27. The 72-year-old former Wall Street lawyer has spiritually accompanied death row inmates in several Florida prisons as a lay chaplain since 1998, alongside his wife Susan.

Even before France's National Assembly abolished capital punishment in 1981, the nation's Catholic bishops had already said the death penalty was incompatible with the Gospel France has paid tribute to Robert Badinter, the Socialist politician who began his term as the country's Minister of Justice (1981-86) fighting to end the death penalty. Badinter, who later became president of the Constitutional Court and then a senator, died on February 9 at age ninety-five . 

LONDON, June 9 (Reuters) - The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged the Anglican Church of Uganda to reject the country's new anti-LGBT law, saying there is no justification for Anglicans anywhere to support legislation that goes against the Christian teachings of the Gospel. Under the law, approved by President Yoweri Museveni in May, gay sex is punishable by life in prison while "aggravated homosexuality", including transmitting HIV, attracts the death penalty. Justin Welby, leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, said he had written to Archbishop Stephen Kaziimba, the Primate of Uganda, to express "grief and dismay" at the church's stance.

Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph, shows no signs of slowing down in her long-standing fight to end the death penalty.  At 83, she is writing her fourth book while directing her advocacy organization, Ministry Against the Death Penalty, in New Orleans. She spends a fair amount of time on the road as she continues to give talks, especially on college campuses, about the injustices she sees with capital punishment. She also continues to minister to both death-row inmates and murder victims’ families. She has accompanied six men to their executions. When asked by Catholic News Service in a Sept. 30 interview where she gets her energy, her responses all revolved around the work she does. For starters, she said she is energized by those she ministers to on death row – currently a Louisiana inmate in his 60s, Manuel Ortiz. The Salvadoran has been on death row for close to 30 years and continues to claim innocence for the sentence he received for hiring someone to murder his wi...

One day after a parole board denied clemency to death row inmate Benjamin Cole, the Archbishop of Oklahoma City registered his disappointment in the decision. “The denial of clemency by the Pardon and Parole Board is disappointing as there is hardly any justice to be seen in taking the life of a man who is hardly able to speak and lacks the basic understanding of why the state is seeking his execution,” Archbishop Paul Coakley said Sept. 28. “While it is too late to provide Benjamin Cole with any care or treatment that might have prevented his crime almost 20 years ago, we still have an obligation to recognize the dignity bestowed upon him by God, and the effects of his debilitating mental illness.” Cole, the archbishop said, “should be allowed to live out what remains of his life in the hope that he receives the mental health care he should have received decades ago. Pray for the victims of violence and their families that God brings them comfort and peace. Pray for the soul of the co...

Vatican City, Feb 27, 2019 / 05:07 pm (CNA).- In a video message sent Wednesday to an international anti-death penalty group Pope Francis encouraged them in their work and deliberations. “Human life is a gift that we have received, the most important and primary, the source of all other gifts and rights. As such it needs to be protected,” Pope Francis said Feb. 27 to the seventh World Congress Against the Death Penalty, being held in Brussels. “The death penalty is a serious violation of the right to life of every person. While it is certain that societies and human communities often face very grave delicts which threaten the common good and the security of persons, it is no less certain that today there are other means to expiate the harm caused, and detention systems are increasingly more effective in protecting society from the evil which some persons can occasion,” the pope stated. “On the other hand, there can never be abandoned the conviction of offering even to th...

Pope Francis has taken a consistently principled position that human life is sacred. I was among the Sri Lankans who were shocked to see media reports in July indicating that President Maithripala Sirisena and his cabinet have given the green light to execute drug offenders on death row. Pope Francis has [for years] taken a consistently principled position that human life is sacred. Through civil wars and insurrections, Sri Lanka was one of 29 countries that had maintained a moratorium on the death penalty. Another 106 countries had abolished it fully by 2017, a year when 23 countries were known to have carried out executions. If some detainees are engaged in drug-related offences from within prison grounds, cited as a reason to rein in the death penalty, security in prisons must be strengthened. This includes using new technology and holding prison officials accountable. There is no evidence in Sri Lanka, or in other countries, that the death penalty has reduced cri...

Harshi Sudarshani, a Sunday school teacher in Negombo, and her younger brother have faced strained relationships with their friends since their father was arrested on a drug charge. The fisherman was arrested after packets of heroin were found on the boat in which he spends long periods at sea in search of tuna. Sudarshani, who joined religious leaders on an anti-drug protest with thousands of others in Negombo in February, denies her father's involvement in drug trafficking and blames the businessman owner of the boat. Her family's worries about the case increased with Sri Lanka's announcement in July that it was introducing capital punishment for persistent drug dealers. "My father is an innocent fisherman who used to go to church," says Sudarshani, who is about to move house due to the social stigma of the drug case. Sri Lanka has been on the map for years as a transit point for drugs, while concerns are growing about the use of illegal d...

As Nebraska hurtles toward a solemn moment it has not experienced in 21 years, its public officials - and citizens - confront what may be tension between their personal views and the tenets of their religious faith. Sometimes, they conflict. Or may appear to do so. Sometimes, they require a choice to be made. In America, the separation of church and state has established that the government is sovereign in settling that argument if and when it reaches the governing stage. But for individuals, including officeholders, the choice remains personal, individual, less clear, sometimes more unsettling and intense. Occasionally, and sometimes dramatically, it all plays out on the public or political stage. When Gov. Ben Nelson sat in the 2nd-floor family quarters at the Governor's Residence one July night in 1996 fielding phone calls from the State Penitentiary at midnight, it was a solemn and virtually solitary moment. Nelson was alerted to each stage of Joh...

Pope Francis has declared the death penalty “ inadmissible .” This means that the death penalty should not be used in any circumstance. It also alters the Catholic Catechism , a compendium of Catholic doctrine, and is now binding on Roman Catholics throughout the world. But in spite of his definitive statement, Pope Francis’ act will probably only deepen the debate about whether Christians can support capital punishment. As a Catholic scholar who writes about religion, politics and policy, I understand how Christians struggle with the death penalty – some cannot endure the idea and others support it as a way to deter and punish terrible crimes.  Some Christian theologians have also observed  that capital punishment could actually lead to a change of heart among criminals who might repent when faced with the finality of death. Is the death penalty un-Christian? The two sides In its early centuries, Christianity was seen with suspicion by authoritie...

Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty activist and author of the book Dead Man Walking , joins America senior editor and chief correspondent Kevin Clarke to discuss Pope Francis' revision of the death penalty teaching. Pope Francis revises Catechism, teaches that death penalty is ‘inadmissible’ Pope Francis has significantly revised the teaching on the death penalty in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, declaring that “in the light of the Gospel” the death penalty “is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and stating that the church works “for its abolition worldwide.” The Vatican announced this today when it released the new revised formulation of the Catechism teaching on the death penalty found at number 2267 of that text, in six different languages. It said this new formulation of the church’s teaching will replace the earlier one in the Catechism approved by St. John Paul II. When the Catec...