| On April 24, the Justice Department revealed its plan to restart federal executions. Among other things, it recommended adding electrocution and the firing squad to the government’s arsenal of methods for putting people to death. |
| Coincidentally, that same day, Pope Leo sent a message to a gathering of people in Chicago celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Illinois’s abolition of capital punishment. Leo’s message was clear and unequivocal in condemning the death penalty. |
| Put side by side, these developments reveal two different worldviews. One of them is comfortable with violence and cruelty as tools of state power; the other rejects that way of being in the world. |
| Abolitionists should use those two statements to highlight the stark moral choice facing the United States. And just as Americans are turning away from an administration that brought us death on the streets, murder on the high seas off Venezuela, and a war of choice in Iran, perhaps they are ready to turn away from the cruelty of capital punishment and the brutality of death by firing squad. |
| This is not the first time the Pope has delivered a powerful message critical of the Trump administration to this nation’s approximately 70 million Catholics. That he did so then and now in a pastoral rather than political fashion makes what he says all the more compelling. |
| Recall the dust-up caused by Pope Leo’s plea for peace and condemnation of the administration’s war of choice in Iran. On April 11, during an evening prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica, he called out what he called the “delusion of omnipotence” fueling the war. |
| Pope Leo proclaimed, “Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war!” As NPR notes, “Praying for peace, Leo said, was a way to 'break the demonic cycle of evil’ to build instead the Kingdom of God where there are no swords, drones or 'unjust profit….’” |
| This followed the Pope’s forthright criticism of President Trump’s threat to wipe out Iran’s civilization if it didn’t surrender. He called the threat “truly unacceptable.” |
| The Pope observed that Trump’s threat was “a moral issue for the good of the whole, entire population.” He called on “everyone to truly think in their hearts about the many innocent people, so many children, so many elderly, completely innocent, who would also become victims of this escalation of a war that began from the very first days.” |
| Trump responded with an unhinged Truth Social Post. |
| He demeaned the Vicar of Rome. “Leo,” he wrote, “should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope and was only put there by the Church because…they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.” |
| Claiming infallibility only fit for a Pope, Trump said that Leo “doesn’t get it.” He observed: “I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States….” |
| “Leo,” Trump argued, “should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.” His additional accusation that the Pope was “soft on crime” seemed ludicrous at the time. |
| Polls show that a majority of Americans of all religious faiths, not just Catholics, found the president’s broadside and comments about the Pope being soft on crime unacceptable. But maybe, even then, the president was thinking of the Church’s previously expressed opposition to capital punishment. |
| Whether he was or not, he certainly can’t be pleased that the Pope again expressed views at odds with the administration on a matter so near and dear to the president’s heart. |
| Trump reiterated his long-time embrace of the death penalty on Day 1 of his second term. He issued an Executive Order in which he declared that “Capital punishment is an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens…[and]…only capital punishment can bring justice and restore order in response to such evil.” |
| The Executive Order called the use of the death penalty against murderers “consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.” It announced that the administration “will not tolerate efforts to stymie and eviscerate the laws that authorize capital punishment against those who commit horrible acts of violence against American citizens.” |
| That’s why the president may have taken special pleasure in the Justice Department’s plan to move full speed ahead in bringing capital prosecutions, obtaining death sentences, and carrying them out by almost any means, including shooting or electrocuting people who receive them. That plan called executions necessary to keep a “sacred promise to achieve justice for victims and their families….” |
| The tone of the plan was angry and self-righteous. |
| Contrast that to what the Pope told his Chicago audience. Speaking with neither anger nor self-righteousness, he said simply, “The Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that 'the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” |
| He went on to say, “that the dignity of the person is not lost even after very serious crimes are committed.” He added, as if refuting the Justice Department’s claims, “Furthermore, effective systems of detention can be and have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption.” |
| Redemption is, of course, not part of the president’s vocabulary or of his programs and policies. |
| In an indirect warning to President Trump, who promised to bring a Golden Age to America, the Pope spoke prophetically: “Only when a society safeguards the sanctity of human life will it flourish and prosper.” And, aligning himself openly with those who oppose Trump and the Justice Department plan, Pope Leo offered his “support to those who advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States of America and around the world.” |
| His commitment to the dignity of all persons and belief in the “possibility of redemption” is a welcome call to the best in all of us. That kind of call is sorely lacking in the president’s leadership style. |
| The Pope’s open support for the abolition movement in this country should put new wind in its sails at a time when the number of executions is creeping up, and the Justice Department is trumpeting its desire to turn them into gruesome spectacles. It is a gift to us all that an American Pope would offer such an uplifting appeal to his countrymen and remind us of what real leadership entails. |
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