Pope appeals for abolition of capital punishment as Biden denies reprieve to death row inmates

Pope Francis yesterday called for all nations to eliminate the death penalty in his message for the 2025 Message for the World Day of Peace.

He said capital punishment “not only compromises the inviolability of life but eliminates every human hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation”.

On Sunday, during his Angelus, the Pope made a specific appeal to America.

He said: “Today, it comes to my heart to ask you all to pray for the prisoners who are on death row in the United States.

“I believe there are 13 or 15 of them. Let us pray that their sentence be commuted, changed. Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.”

It is unusual for a pontiff to make such a specific request on the issue, with such appeals usually made in more general terms.

At the state level, over 2,400 people currently are awaiting execution. The number in the federal government’s system is just 40, but that’s still more than double what the Pope thought.

President Joe Biden is leaving office next month and has the power to commute the sentences of those people on the federal death row.

During his 2020 campaign for office, Biden pledged to “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example”.

This never happened, but his administration did issue a moratorium on death penalties, and no federal prisoner on death row was executed during his administration.

However, his successor Donald Trump has pledged to have all 40 federal prisoners on the federal death row executed during his four years in office, and to increase the number of people subject to the death penalty.

Trump resumed federal executions in the last year of his first term, following a 17-year hiatus. His administration put 13 prisoners to death – more than in the previous 50 years combined.

On Thursday, several people at first hoped Biden has followed Francis’s call when it was announced he was commuting 1,500 prison sentences and pardoning 39 other people.

However, none of these were on death row.

Francis is perhaps hopeful that the second Catholic president of the United States might be willing to use the Pope as an excuse for pushing through a policy they both support – it is a difficult stance for U.S. politicians, since the majority of Americans support the death penalty.

Of course, the first Catholic president was living in a different era – when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, capital punishment was still technically legal in Vatican City, since it wasn’t abolished until 1969.

Among Western democracies, the United States is the only Christian-majority nation to still regularly carry out executions.

Although opposed by the U.S. Catholic Church, many Catholic politicians in America have endorsed the practice.

The next most likely Catholic candidate for president, is Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, who takes office during a Trump presidency that can last only one term.

In the run-up to the 2024 election, Vance pledged support for increasing the use of death penalty at the federal level.

Pope Francis may still be hoping Biden takes the opportunity to commute the sentences of the 20 federal death row inmates before Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025.

(A view of the death chamber from the witness room at the Southern Ohio/Photo by Mike Simons/Getty Images)

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