Zimpapers Logo

Pope Francis

Rome. – Pope Francis said the death penalty was “inadmissible” and that official Catholic teaching should be changed to reflect that, comments with the potential to reshape the church’s public stance on the controversial issue.

“It must be strongly stated that condemning a person to the death penalty is an inhumane measure,” the Pope said on Thursday. He was speaking at a Vatican conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a guide to church teaching published under Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005. The Catholic Church currently teaches that recourse to the death penalty is permitted but “the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare if not practically non-existent.”

Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI spoke out against the death penalty, but Francis is the first Pope to suggest changing official church teaching on the issue. According to a 2016 Pew Research poll, 43 percent of US Catholics support the death penalty, while 46 percent are opposed. Francis’ recent comments could put that 43 percent of US Catholics in a tricky position. Previously, popes and Catholic teaching allowed for a difference of opinion on the issue.

“There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia,” Pope Benedict, when he was still a cardinal, wrote in 2004. If the wording of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is changed to reflect the stronger language of Pope Francis on the death penalty, Catholics who support capital punishment will have to reconsider their position. In the United States, the US Conference of Catholics Bishops has been vocal in its opposition to the death penalty in the last decade. In 2005, they began a campaign to end it. – CNN.