Church in the World

Church rejects calls for death penalty

Poland

A Polish Church leader has criticised demands by one of his country's governing parties for restoration of the death penalty for murderers and paedophiles, rejecting claims that the move would conform with Catholic Church teaching. "The style of the hard man sometimes makes its appearance here as an expression of principled loyalty to the Christian faith - put brutally, anyone who can't measure up to our demands should be excluded from human society," said Archbishop Jozef Zycinski of Lublin. "In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, however, John Paul II clearly said the penalty for criminals shouldn't extend to taking life. He taught respect for life at all its stages."

The Church leader was reacting to calls for capital punishment by the populist Polish Families League (LPR), whose leaders have claimed justification in Catholic teaching. Addressing pilgrims en route to the Jasna Gora national shrine, he said the Church believed non-violent measures reflected human dignity and were sufficient to ensure law and order. He added that circles still existed in Poland which lacked "respect for human life and its dramas", and said he had also been asked to oppose the "humiliating treatment of homosexuals by Catholic groups".  "Attitudes like this reflect the complexes of the hard man who wants everyone to be the same," Archbishop Zycinski said. LPR supporters told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily they had collected most of the 500,000 signatures needed for a referendum on the death penalty.