Pope Francis has called the death penalty “inadmissible” and said it has no legitimacy in modern justice systems.
In a strongly worded letter he presented to the President of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, Federico Mayor, at the Vatican on Friday, the Pope said that there were no circumstances in which capital punishment was acceptable.
He called the death penalty “cruel, inhuman and degrading” and lamented the anguish prisoners suffered before death, as well as the “terrible waiting” between sentencing and execution.
Many suffered mental and physical illnesses because they were confined to this “waiting room of death”, he said. He dismissed attempts to make executions humane and said: “There is no human way of killing another person.”
Today the US state of Utah announced it would resume the use of firing squads for executions because European manufacturers have refused to supply it with lethal injection drugs.
In his statement on Friday Pope Francis said: “Today the death penalty is inadmissible, no matter how serious the crime of the condemned. It is an offence against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person that contradicts God’s plan for man and society and his merciful justice, and it impedes fulfilling the just end of the punishments. It does not do justice to the victims, but foments vengeance.”
He dismissed arguments in favour of capital punishment that claim that criminals are executed in a form of societal self-defence.
“When the death penalty is applied, persons are killed not for present aggressions, but for harm caused in the past. Moreover, it is applied to persons whose capacity to harm is not present but has already been neutralised, and who find themselves deprived of their freedom,” he argued.
He went on: “The death penalty loses all legitimacy given the defective selectivity of the criminal system and in face of the possibility of judicial error. Human justice is imperfect, and not to recognise its fallibility can turn it into a source of injustices.”
He also condemned life imprisonment as a form of "veiled death penalty".
Some 36 countries practice capital punishment. In the US it is legal in 32 states. Earlier this month the editors of four major American Catholic journals – America, National Catholic Register, National Catholic Reporter and Our Sunday Visitor – issued a joint statement calling for an end to the death penalty in the US.
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