VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has again reiterated his opposition to the death penalty, citing his 2018 statements which contradicted Catholic Tradition and teaching on the matter.

“As I have repeatedly emphasized, the death penalty is in no way a solution to the violence that can strike innocent people,” wrote Francis in a preface for a newly published book.

“Capital executions, far from bringing justice, fuel a sense of revenge that becomes a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies,” he stated.

Francis’s latest remarks are found in a work entitled “A Christian on Death Row: My Commitment to Those Condemned,” published by the Vatican’s in-house publishing house, August 27.

“Indeed, 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).”

The book is authored by Dale Recinella, a lawyer and lay Catholic chaplain ministering to prisoners on death row in Florida for over 25 years, providing support and counsel to them and their families. Recinella provides chaplaincy work to the inmates sentenced on death row, and along with his wife advocates for ending the death penalty.

In comments previously given to DeathPenalty.org, Renicella said that “witnessing the execution of a man that I absolutely believe is innocent, that keeps me up at night.” Continuing, he added:

Watching a botched execution, that keeps me up. Imagining the 400 men whom I know by name strapped to the gurney, that keeps me up at night. We are too civilized to be involved in the state killing its citizens. [Capital punishment] has outlived any justifiable purpose it might have had. It will be abolished in our lifetime. I absolutely believe it. That makes it possible to go to sleep at night.

Speaking to EWTN’s Colm Flynn in 2021, Recinella commented that “there is absolutely no solid evidence one way or the other on the death penalty being a deterrent, or the death penalty not being a deterrent. It seems to depend on other factors.”

Pope Francis wrote the forward to a new book by Dale Recincella. I interviewed Dale two years ago about the work he does with Florida inmates on death row. Our topic of discussion, what is ‘justice’?, and when does mercy start and end? pic.twitter.com/h7q1w0Z9KU

— Colm Flynn (@colmflynnire) August 19, 2024

Francis’s reference to the catechism is in fact a reference to the changes he made to the current Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 regarding the death penalty.

His groundbreaking changes to Pope John Paul II’s and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s catechism declared that the death penalty “is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

Less than a year later, Francis redoubled his personal arguments against the death penalty, sending a video message to the 7th World Congress Against the Death Penalty calling it “a serious violation of the right to life that every person has.”

He then repeated his claims when in his August 2022 “Pope Video” project he claimed that “in the light of the Gospel, the death penalty is unacceptable.” Again in January 2023, Francis stated that the death penalty is “always inadmissible since it attacks the inviolability and the dignity of the person.”

He also issued an appeal for the end of capital punishment:

I appeal, then, for an end to the death penalty, which is always inadmissible since it attacks the inviolability and the dignity of the person, in the legislation of all the countries of the world. We cannot overlook the fact that, up until his or her very last moment, a person can repent and change.

However, in changing the text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), scholars have argued that Francis went against the consistent teaching of “Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church” which “for 2,000 years have upheld the intrinsic legitimacy of the death penalty for grave crimes against the common good of Church or State.”

Francis’s repeated arguments against the death penalty come in opposition to the writings, teaching, and statements of theologians, saints, and the magisterium throughout the history of the Church, as scholars – such as Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette, joint authors of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment – have extensively pointed out.

The licit nature of the death penalty is outlined in the words of Scripture, for in the book of Genesis capital punishment is permitted precisely because murder violates man’s dignity as being made in the image of God: “whosever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God.” (Gen 9:6) 

This teaching is further proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas, who drew from Scripture himself to teach that the common good is protected, and justice preserved, by observing the death penalty. (Summa Theologiae, 2a 2ae, q64, a2 & a3).

READ: Allowing death penalty is Catholic doctrine and cannot be overturned: two Catholic profs

Avery Cardinal Dulles stated in 2004 that “the reversal of a doctrine as well established as the legitimacy of capital punishment would raise serious problems regarding the credibility of the magisterium … the previous teaching had been discarded, doubt would be cast on the current teaching as well.”