On World Day Against the Death Penalty, Pope Leo XIV declared capital punishment inadmissible. In a post on X, the American pope quoted the revised Catholic teaching introduced by Pope Francis that the death penalty violates the inherent dignity of a human being. He wrote that the common good can be safeguarded and justice met without recourse to capital punishment, that effective detention systems protect citizens while preserving the possibility of redemption for the guilty. The post concluded with the hashtag #NoDeathPenalty.
Meanwhile, the United States announced that the firing‑squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of the 2009 Fort Hood shooting that killed 13 people and wounded 32, will be livestreamed. The execution is scheduled for Dec. 3 at Fort Hood.
Leo’s statement did not refer directly to the planned execution, but it arrived just hours after Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the livestream was unacceptable. Parolin described the plan as “truly incomprehensible” and “unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle,” reaffirming the Church’s total opposition to the death penalty as incompatible with human dignity and ineffective as a deterrent.
Pope Francis amended Catholic teaching in 2018 to declare the death penalty inadmissible in all circumstances, a shift from the earlier Catechism that allowed it as a last resort. Leo has continued Pope Francis’s emphasis on visiting prisons and offering hope to inmates, emphasizing that all people deserve dignity and the chance for redemption. He visited the notorious Bata prison in Equatorial Guinea in April and will visit a prison in Buenos Aires during his upcoming Latin‑American tour.
The U.S. bishops’ conference expressed shock and sorrow at the Pentagon’s plans. Archbishop Paul Coakley said the decision was a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death” that would undermine the nation’s moral fabric and be a blight on its conscience.
