Pope Leo declares the death penalty ‘unacceptable’ as his home country, the US, plans to live-stream the execution – National

Pope Leo

In his post on

“The common good can be maintained and the requirements of justice can be met without using the death penalty,” wrote a post on Leo’s official account, @Pontifex. “An effective detention system has been developed to protect citizens and at the same time not completely eliminate the possibility of release for those who are guilty.”

The post ends with the hashtag #NoDeathPenalty.

The US Department of Defense announced on Thursday that the firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of a 2009 shooting at the Fort Hood military base, would be broadcast live. Hasan, who was scheduled to be executed at Fort Hood on December 3, was found guilty of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others.

Leo did not refer specifically to the planned executions, or the previous lethal injection fiasco in Tennessee that has reignited debate over the death penalty in the United States. Saturday is World Day Against the Death Penalty, and the Pope’s official social media accounts usually post messages marking the anniversary.

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But Leo’s post came just hours after his top deputy, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said explicitly that plans for public executions in the US were “unacceptable.”

Pope Francis declares death penalty ‘unacceptable’

Pope Francis in 2018 changed official Catholic teaching to declare the death penalty “inadmissible” in all circumstances.

Previously, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official summary of church teaching, said that the church does not exclude the use of the death penalty “if this is the only possible means to effectively defend human life from unjust attackers.”

Past popes have upheld the position, although St. John Paul II began to urge an end to the practice and emphasized that the guilty were as worthy of dignity as the innocent.

Like Pope Francis before him, Leo made prison visits an important part of his papacy in an effort to give prisoners a message of hope and emphasize their inherent dignity, that God loves them and that there is always a chance for redemption.

“If any of you are afraid of being abandoned by everyone, know that God will never abandon you, and that the church will stand by your side,” Leo told inmates at the notorious Bata prison in Equatorial Guinea during his visit in April. Leo will visit a prison in Buenos Aires during his upcoming tour of Latin America.

Speaking specifically about the United States, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said the planned live executions were “completely incomprehensible” and “it is unacceptable for deaths to be made into spectacles.”

“The Church’s position is strongly against the death penalty; it is incompatible with human dignity and has no deterrent effect…,” Parolin said in comments published by Vatican News. “It is completely incomprehensible that anyone would want to use this system today – I don’t know for what purpose. Of course it is unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle; even if the person is guilty, of course, there are other methods.”

The head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul Coakley, expressed “shock” and “great sadness” at the Pentagon’s plans.

“Hasan’s actions are completely inexcusable, but this decision is a promotion of a barbaric culture of death and must be reconsidered,” he said in a statement Friday. “Public execution of even someone who has committed a grave crime will only further damage the moral fabric of our nation and damage the conscience of its people.”

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