To­day, Oc­to­ber 10, is World Day Against the Death Penal­ty. The World Coali­tion against the Death Penal­ty (WCADP) ded­i­cates this day in 2026 and 2027 to “hu­man­is­ing the peo­ple af­fect­ed by the Death Penal­ty, fo­cus­ing on the sto­ries of the hu­man be­ings af­fect­ed by the death penal­ty whose voic­es are too of­ten ne­glect­ed or si­lenced...

“This cam­paign high­lights the ne­ces­si­ty of tak­ing in­to ac­count the struc­tur­al, so­cial, and in­di­vid­ual con­di­tions that may have con­tributed to a per­son com­ing in­to con­flict with the law, in­clud­ing fac­tors such as pover­ty, dis­crim­i­na­tion, trau­ma, men­tal health is­sues, or ex­pe­ri­ences of gen­der-based or oth­er forms of vi­o­lence, which are wide­ly doc­u­ment­ed as dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly af­fect­ing vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions. It al­so un­der­scores the se­vere psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing caused by pro­longed death row in­car­cer­a­tion, un­cer­tain­ty, and con­di­tions of de­ten­tion, which may amount to tor­ture.

“Re­call­ing the hu­man­i­ty of per­sons sen­tenced to death does not di­min­ish the suf­fer­ing of vic­tims and their fam­i­lies or the harm caused to so­ci­ety. Rather, it recog­nis­es that the death penal­ty af­fects every­one: vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, per­sons sen­tenced to death and their fam­i­lies, lawyers, judges, prison staff, abo­li­tion­ists, and en­tire com­mu­ni­ties. All of them have sto­ries to tell.”

Christa Pike’s re­cent botched ex­e­cu­tion in Ten­nessee was the sec­ond failed at­tempt at lethal in­jec­tion there this year. While we must nev­er for­get Pike’s vic­tim, Colleen Slem­mer, and all vic­tims of crimes, CC­SJ sup­ports the Catholic Church’s stance against the death penal­ty. On Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, Pope Leo XIV said that sup­port­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was in­con­sis­tent with be­ing pro-life. On April 24, 2026, Pope Leo XIV de­liv­ered a video mes­sage of­fer­ing his sup­port and bless­ings to those work­ing “for the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and around the world.” His mes­sage marked the 15th an­niver­sary of Illi­nois’ abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in 2011.

The Death Penal­ty In­for­ma­tion Cen­ter (DPIC) re­ports: “Pope Leo said his mes­sage was based on the sanc­ti­ty of hu­man life. ‘The Catholic Church has con­sis­tent­ly taught that each hu­man life, from the mo­ment of con­cep­tion un­til nat­ur­al death, is sa­cred and de­serves to be pro­tect­ed. In­deed, the right to life is the very foun­da­tion of every oth­er hu­man right.’” He af­firmed that this dig­ni­ty en­dures, re­gard­less of crimes a per­son has com­mit­ted, and that mod­ern de­ten­tion sys­tems are ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing pub­lic safe­ty with­out re­ly­ing on ex­e­cu­tions.

“Re­fer­ring to the Catholic Cat­e­chism, Pope Leo de­clared ‘that the death penal­ty is in­ad­mis­si­ble be­cause it is an at­tack on the in­vi­o­la­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty of the per­son.’ He of­fered his ex­plic­it sup­port for those work­ing to abol­ish the death penal­ty in the US and across the world, pray­ing that their ‘ef­forts will lead to a greater ac­knowl­edge­ment of the dig­ni­ty of every per­son, and will in­spire oth­ers to work for the same just cause.’ Pope Leo’s state­ment re­flects the Catholic Church’s cur­rent teach­ings, which Pope Fran­cis re­vised in 2018, and built on Pope John Paul II’s long­stand­ing calls to end the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.” (DPIC).

When, on Au­gust 1, 2018, Pope Fran­cis ap­proved a new re­vi­sion of para­graph num­ber 2267 of the Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church he stat­ed: “... giv­en that mod­ern so­ci­ety pos­sess­es more ef­fi­cient de­ten­tion sys­tems, the death penal­ty be­comes un­nec­es­sary as pro­tec­tion for the life of in­no­cent peo­ple.”

“Since 1973, at least 203 peo­ple who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in the US have been ex­on­er­at­ed.” Note “The Most Com­mon Caus­es of Wrong­ful Death Penal­ty Con­vic­tions: Of­fi­cial Mis­con­duct and Per­jury or False Ac­cu­sa­tion” (DPIC).

The US Bish­ops asks: “Even if the death penal­ty were al­ways im­posed with­out er­ror, should we sup­port its use? We teach that killing is wrong by re­spond­ing with mer­cy and jus­tice, not more killing. We don’t want a gov­ern­ment that kills when so­ci­ety can be pro­tect­ed ful­ly by the blood­less means of life im­pris­on­ment. By fos­ter­ing a spir­it of vengeance, which should have no role in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice, the death penal­ty con­tributes to the in­creas­ing dis­re­spect for hu­man life in our cul­ture.”

The WCADP shares the fol­low­ing sta­tis­tics from Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al:

• 113 States have abol­ished the death penal­ty for all crimes

• Nine States have abol­ished the death penal­ty for com­mon law crimes

• 23 States are abo­li­tion­ists in prac­tice

• 54 States are re­ten­tion­ists (in­clud­ing T&T)

• At least 25,508 in­di­vid­u­als are known to be un­der a sen­tence of death around the world at the end of 2025, of which around than five per cent are women (sta­tis­tic on women sen­tenced to death by Cor­nell Cen­ter on the Death Penal­ty World­wide).

Let’s pro­mote/pro­tect all lives.