PRO-LIFE SUNDAY SERMON

Death penalty brings no justice, poison for society-pope

In preface to 'A Christian on Death Row'

ROME, 18 August 2024
ANSA English Desk


The death penalty is "in no way a solution to the violence that can strike innocent people", Pope Francis wrote in the preface released Sunday to 'A Christian on Death Row: My Commitment to Those Condemned', a new book by Dale Recinella, set for publication by the Vatican Publishing House (LEV) on Tuesday, August 27.

"Capital executions, far from bringing justice, fuel a sense of revenge that becomes a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies", the pontiff wrote in the preface.
"States should focus on allowing prisoners the opportunity to truly change their lives, rather than investing money and resources in their execution, as if they were human beings no longer worthy of living and to be disposed of", said the pope.

In the book out next Tuesday, Recinella, 72, formerly a successful lawyer on Wall Street, talks about his work since 1998 as a lay chaplain aiding inmates on death row in Florida, an experience he has shared with wife Susan.

"Jesus is capable of revolutionizing our plans, our aspirations, and our perspectives", the pontiff also wrote in the preface.

"The story of Dale Recinella, whom I met during an audience, and have come to know better through the articles he has written over the years for L'Osservatore Romano and now through this deeply moving book, confirms what I have said: only in this way can we understand how a man, who had other goals in mind for his future, became the chaplain—as a lay Christian, husband, and father—to those condemned to death.

"His is an extremely difficult, risky, and arduous task, because it touches evil in all its dimensions: the evil committed against the victims, which cannot be undone; the evil the condemned person is living through, knowing they are destined for certain death; the evil that, through the practice of the death penalty, is instilled in society.

According to the pontiff, "the Jubilee should commit all believers to collectively call for the abolition of the death penalty, a practice that, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person!" (n.2267).

In order to support such a thesis, Pope Francis quotes The Idiot in which Fyodor Dostoevsky "succinctly encapsulates the logical and moral unsustainability of the death penalty, speaking of a man condemned to death: "It is a violation of the human soul, nothing more! "It is written: 'Thou shalt not kill,' and yet, because he has killed, others kill him.

"No, it is something that should not exist".

The pontiff talks about Recinella's work as lay chaplain as "a great gift" for the Church and US society, where Dale works and lives.

"His commitment as a lay chaplain, particularly in such an inhumane place as death row, is a living and passionate testimony to the infinite mercy of God", he wrote.

The pope concluded offering "a sincere and heartfelt thank you to Dale Racinella: because his work as a chaplain on death row is a tenacious and passionate adherence to the deepest reality of the Gospel of Jesus".