VATICAN (OSV News): “The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty,” Pope Leo XIV posted on his official X account [formerly known as Twitter] on October 10—World Day Against the Death Penalty.
Pope Leo’s post came a day after the Vatican secretary of state, Pietro Cardinal Parolin, and the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, made statements against the US government’s planned public execution of Nidal Malik Hasan the former US Army psychiatrist, was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. A military court sentenced him to death in 2013.
Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of Defense said in an October 8 interview with the pro-Trump TV outlet Real America’s Voice News that the execution would take place at Fort Hood on December 3, and that it would be made public.
Speaking to reporters October 9, Cardinal Parolin said plans for a livestreamed execution were unacceptable.
The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person
Pope Leo XIV
“It is truly incomprehensible that anyone would want to use this method in this day and age,” he said. “I do not know for what purpose. It is certainly unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle. However guilty the person may be, there are other ways.”
He reiterated that the death penalty “is incompatible with human dignity and does not serve as a deterrent.”
Archbishop Coakley issued a statement on October 9 that condemned the government’s plans, warning, “The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.”
The archbishop said, “Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered. The word of God exhorts us: ‘do not repay anyone evil for evil’ [Romans 12:17].”
It is certainly unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle. However guilty the person may be, there are other ways.
Cardinal Parolin
The late Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 to clarify the Church’s teaching that capital punishment is morally “inadmissible” in the modern world “because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
In his 2020 encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis cited the teaching of Pope St. John Paul II, writing that his predecessor “stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice.”
Earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV delivered a video message to Catholic death penalty abolitionists marking 15 years since the abolition of the death penalty in his home state of Illinois.
If carried out, Hasan’s execution would mark the first time US. officials livestreamed an execution to the public. The last public execution in the US took place in Missouri in 1937, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.
