Pope Leo XIV stated this Saturday (10) that the death penalty is "inadmissible" and represents an attack on human dignity. The statement comes amid controversy caused by plans by the government of the United States, the pontiff's home country, to broadcast live the execution of a former soldier convicted of killing 13 people.
The demonstration was published on social media on the occasion of World Day against the Death Penalty. Without directly mentioning the American government, Leo XIV argued that it is possible to protect society and guarantee the application of justice without resorting to the execution of convicts.
In a publication in X, the pope stated that current prison systems allow the population to be protected without depriving the condemned of the possibility of redemption. The message was accompanied by the hashtag #NoDeathPenalty (No Death Penalty, in Portuguese).
The statement comes two days after the Pentagon announced that it would broadcast live the shooting of Nidal Malik Hasan, a former US Army major convicted of the attack on the Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2009.
Hasan killed 13 people and injured 32 others. Sentenced to death in 2013, he is scheduled to be executed on December 3, at the same military base where the attack took place.
President Donald Trump authorized the execution, but said on Friday (9) that the Department of Defense had not yet made a definitive decision on the live broadcast.
On Friday (9), the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, directly criticized the American proposal and stated that turning an execution into a spectacle is unacceptable.
"It is certainly not acceptable to turn death into a spectacle. Even though, naturally, the person is guilty, there are other means," said Parolin, according to Vatican News, the Vatican's official news service.
The cardinal also reiterated that the Catholic Church opposes capital punishment as it considers it incompatible with human dignity. According to him, the execution of convicts does not work as an instrument to prevent crimes.
The Pentagon's proposal also received criticism from Church representatives in the United States itself.
The president of the American Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Paul Coakley, expressed shock and deep sadness at the announcement.
In a statement released on Friday, Coakley said the seriousness of Hasan's crimes did not justify the decision to make his death a public broadcast. He called the proposal a barbaric promotion of the culture of death and called for it to be reconsidered.
If carried out, Hasan's execution will be the first carried out by the American Armed Forces since 1961. The last military shooting took place in 1945.
The position defended by Leo XIV follows a change formalized by Pope Francis in 2018, when the Catholic Church began to declare the death penalty inadmissible in all circumstances.
Until then, the Catechism of the Catholic Church admitted the possibility of execution when this was the only means available to protect human lives from an aggressor.
The review carried out by Francisco established that capital punishment constitutes an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, regardless of the gravity of the crime committed.
Opposition to the practice had already been strengthened during the pontificate of John Paul II, who advocated an end to executions and emphasized that condemned people should also have their dignity preserved.
Like Francis, Leo XIV has dedicated part of his trips to visits to prisons.
In April, during a visit to Bata prison, in Equatorial Guinea, the pontiff told inmates that they would not be abandoned by God and that the Church would remain at their side.
The pope also has a visit to a Buenos Aires prison planned during his next trip to Latin America.
