Bishops were among the first to sign the ‘National Catholic Pledge to End the Death Penalty’ at the US bishops’ headquarters building on May 9.
Each person taking the pledge promises to educate, advocate and pray for an end to capital punishment.
“All Christians and people of goodwill are thus called today to fight not only for the abolition of the death penalty, whether legal or illegal, and in all its forms, but also in order to improve prison conditions, with respect for the human dignity of the people deprived of their freedom,” Pope Francis has said. This quotation kicks off the pledge.
The pledge drive is organised by the Catholic Mobilizing Network.
“The death penalty represents a failure of our society to fulfil the demands of human dignity, as evidenced by the 159 people and counting who have been exonerated due to their innocence since 1973,” the organisation says on the pledge sheet following space for someone’s signature.
Quoting from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the network added, “The death penalty is not needed to maintain public safety, punishment must ‘correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and (be) more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.'”
After capital punishment was halted nationwide briefly in the 1970s, more than 1,400 people have been executed since it resumed 40 years ago, according to the Catholic Mobilizing Network. “The prolonged nature of the death penalty process can perpetuate the trauma for victims’ families and prevents the opportunity for healing and reconciliation called for in the message of Jesus Christ.”
Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, said he and his fellow bishops have voiced their views strongly with Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, where capital punishment is legal and where prisoners have been executed.
Bishop Dewane, in recalling Pope John Paul II’s successful personal appeal to the governor of Missouri to spare a death-row inmate’s life during the pope’s visit to St Louis in 1999, said the episode offers hope. “It’s a great example,” he added. “You never know how your words will be taken, or accepted.”
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