Pope Leo XIV has sent a message of support to participants at a Catholic university event marking 15 years since the abolition of the death penalty in his home state of Illinois. Source: OSV News.
On the same day, the Trump Administration announced plans to expand the available methods of federal execution, including bringing back the firing squad and the electric chair.
In a two-minute video released on Friday, Pope Leo addressed participants at DePaul University in Chicago for a gathering titled “A Beacon of Light in Darkness.”
The commemoration featured anti-death penalty activist Sr Helen Prejean and former Illinois governor. Pat Quinn, who in 2011 signed the state bill abolishing capital punishment, commuting the sentences of the 15 death row inmates at the time to life in prison.
“The Catholic Church has consistently taught that each human life, from the moment of conception until natural death, is sacred and deserves to be protected,” Pope Leo said in his message.
“Indeed, the right to life is the very foundation of every other human right.”
“For this reason,” he said, “only when a society safeguards the sanctity of human life will it flourish and prosper.”
Pope Leo then summarised the Catholic Church’s position on the death penalty, the formulation of which Pope Francis clarified in 2018, revising paragraph 2267 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church – a move that built on St John Paul II’s frequent and longstanding calls to abandon the death penalty.
Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network – a US-based organisation working to end the death penalty and advance justice solutions in line with Catholic teaching — said the Pope “makes it crystal clear that the death penalty is a priority for the universal Church”.
Also on Friday, the US Department of Justice said it would seek to streamline the death penalty process and increase the means of administering the federal death penalty, directing the Federal Bureau of Prisons to restore the lethal drug pentobarbital and “additional manners of execution.”
“The additional manners of execution that BOP should consider adopting include the firing squad, electrocution, and lethal gas — each of which the Supreme Court has found to be consistent with the Eighth Amendment,” stated the DOJ Office of Legal Policy document “Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty.”
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Pope Leo encourages death penalty abolitionists as Trump DOJ brings back firing squad, electric chair (By Gina Christian, OSV News)
