Death Penalty News

Whoever saves one life saves the world entire Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland — In a place built to erase human dignity, one man gave his life so another could live. The story of Father Maximilian Kolbe, Auschwitz inmate number 16670, stands as a lasting testament to the power of faith and sacrifice in the darkest of times. Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar, was arrested by Nazi authorities in February 1941. His crime: offering shelter to Jews and members of the Polish underground at his monastery in Niepokalanów, west of Warsaw. The priest had long been a thorn in the side of the Nazi regime. Through his religious publications and missionary work, he had spoken out against the rising tide of hatred sweeping across Europe.

In an interview with Vatican News, death row prison chaplain and author, the Rev. Joseph B. Ingle, reflects on his pastoral work and advocacy and talks about the time he was part of an effort to gain pardon for Robert Sullivan, a death row inmate in the 1980s, that involved Pope John Paul II who personally pleaded for clemency to save Sullivan's life.

After a report dubbed 2022 “the year of the botched execution,” Catholic activists renewed their calls for an end to capital punishment in the U.S. at both the state and federal levels. Despite declining public support for the practice, and a campaign promise from President Joe Biden, a Catholic and a Democrat, to repeal the federal death penalty, a bill to do so gained little traction last Congress, when Democrats still controlled both chambers.

Has the death penalty prevented the supply of illicit drugs in the city-state Singapore is a representation of humanity’s techno future. The city-state is one of the top Asian cities in terms of wealth, with a highly educated population and impressive infrastructure and public services. But in the past 7 months, Singapore has sent at least 11 people to the gallows. And, that should be a concern for rights groups and Christian Churches that campaign against capital punishment. The figure is met with skepticism, as Singapore does not notify the public about every execution it carries out nor does it release information about inmates waiting for their turn to be executed. Prison officials and executioners are bound by the Official Secrets Act not to divulge details of their work. The death penalty raises many questions as the state decides who lives and dies, and ultimately what message capital punishment conveys to society as a whole. The Church in Singapore, part of the global Catholic ...

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...

VATICAN CITY — Death row inmates in Florida’s prisons refer to their 6-foot-by-9-foot cell as their “house,” with some having lived in their “house” for 40 years — longer than one Catholic lay chaplain said he has lived in his family home in Tallahassee. So when Dale Recinella, the lay minister, goes from cell to cell to offer pastoral care, religious education and spiritual accompaniment, “we go house to house, cell to cell, and that’s where we meet them.” These are men and women who cannot come out, “they can’t even come to the chapel,” so the church must go to them. Recinella has been serving as a Catholic correctional chaplain for inmates on death row and in solitary confinement on behalf of the Catholic bishops of Florida for decades. With just a few more months until his 70th birthday, Recinella was at the Vatican to be honored by the Pontifical Academy for Life and receive its first ever Guardian of Life Award during a special evening event Sept. 28. The academy was holding its ...

Pope Francis’ new encyclical, “Fratelli Tutti,” does something that some Catholics believed could not be done: It ratifies a change in church teaching. In this case, on the death penalty. In 2018, Pope Francis ordered a change in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official compendium of church teaching, when he termed the death penalty “inadmissible.” Today the pope placed the full weight of his teaching authority behind this statement: The death penalty is inadmissible, and Catholics should work for its abolition. A papal encyclical is one of the highest of all documents in terms of its authority, removing any lingering doubt about the church’s belief. “There can be no stepping back from this position,” says Francis, referring to the opposition to capital punishment expressed by St. John Paul II. “Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the Church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide.” Helen Prejean, C.S.J., author of Dead Man ...

“A twisted halftime show between executions.” Barbara Koeppel reports on the outrage over this year’s National Catholic Prayer Breakfast honoree.  On Sept. 23, Attorney General William Barr was honored with the Christifideles Laici award at the 16th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast (NCPB). To those not versed in Latin, it’s given “to highlight the good works and those who serve the Church so well.” Many Catholics were outraged. Barr reinstated the death penalty for federal prisoners this past July. Until then, there were none for 17 years. Since July, there have been seven. The award was squeezed between the sixth and seventh executions: One was on Sept. 22, the day before the breakfast, and the other was on Sept. 24, the day after.  The two men, William LeCroy and Christopher Vialva , who had been convicted of murder, had been imprisoned for 26 and 20 years. The yearly breakfast is sponsored by the Fellowship Foundation, which a 2019 NBC report described as an evang...

The U.S. bishops’ conference on Thursday criticized the federal government for its continued use of the death penalty, which the Justice Department resumed this summer after a 17-year moratorium on federal executions. “The Church’s opposition to the death penalty is clear, and we have made many requests that the federal government should not resume these executions. Yet, not only has the government done so, they have scheduled even more executions. After the first 3 in July, there are 2 this week, and 2 more at the end of September,” the U.S. bishops said in an Aug. 27 statement. “Remembering the Lord’s call for mercy, we renew our plea: stop these executions!” The statement was signed by Archbishop Paul Coakley, chair of the bishops’ domestic policy committee, and Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chair of the pro-life committee. On Wednesday, the federal government executed a Navajo man convicted of a double murder, Lezmond Mitchell, despite the objections of the Navajo N...

Click here to Google translate the following story into your own language Tras la decisión del Fiscal General de los Estados Unidos de fijar nuevas fechas para la ejecución de cuatro condenados a muerte, y la decisión de la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos de no admitir su apelación, el arzobispo Paul S. Coakley de Oklahoma City ha reiterado su apremiante llamamiento al Gobierno a dar marcha atrás: "oponerse a la pena de muerte no significa ser 'blando' con el crimen, sino ser fuerte con la dignidad de la vida humana", aseveró. "La pena de muerte es inaceptable, es una afrenta al Evangelio y al respeto de la vida humana": así lo escribe en una nota Monseñor Paul Coakley, arzobispo de Oklahoma City y presidente del Comité de Justicia Interna y Desarrollo Humano de la Conferencia de Obispos de los Estados Unidos (Usccb). Su declaración llega después de que la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos diera el visto bueno a la administración de Trump p...

Just after midnight on May 21, 1987, I watched as Edward slowly choked to death, gulping in cyanide gas, a means directly descended from the Zyklon B used on an industrial scale by the Nazis. A few minutes earlier, I had walked with Edward into the awful, oval Mississippi gas chamber, and hugged him before the guards strapped him tightly down to the chair. I then waited 10 minutes – it seemed hours, and it seemed seconds – in a witness chair, behind Edward, only able to see the back of his head. (This is a key part of execution protocol: they don’t want you to see the agony on a prisoner’s face as he or she dies.) Edward finally spoke, mostly to himself. “Well, I guess no one’s going to call. OK, let’s get this over with.” I hold myself responsible for Edward’s death. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to think about it. Paul Hamann filmed the two weeks running up to this catastrophic finale for his film, Fourteen Days in May (1987), so I have the dubious luxury of being able to ...