Holy See urges global abolition of the death penalty at UN

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Holy See’s representative to the United Nations has urged governments worldwide to abolish the death penalty, calling for an immediate moratorium on executions as a step toward a global ban.

On October 7, Archbishop Christophe Z. El-Kassis, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, delivered an address to the Third Committee of the 81st session of the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Speaking on the “Promotion and protection of human rights,” the Vatican representative called on all member states retaining capital punishment to institute an immediate “moratorium on executions” as a mandatory stepping stone toward complete global abolition.

“The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” El-Kassis declared before the U.N. assembly, quoting the text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as altered by Pope Francis. “A person’s God-given dignity is never forfeited, no matter the gravity of the crime.… The purpose of punishment is not vengeance, but rather to repair the social bond, protect the common good, and reintegrate the offender.”

In his address, El-Kassis welcomed the growing number of secular states that outlawed execution or adopted moratoriums, while expressing regret that “executions continue in too many places.”

Quoting Pope Leo XIV, he urged nations retaining the death penalty to “commute existing death sentences” without delay, “guarantee fair trials with adequate legal defense,” and invest “in rehabilitation and restorative approaches that facilitate renewal.”

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Furthermore, the Holy See representative addressed crime prevention and international drug control, arguing that while law enforcement must dismantle criminal trafficking networks, “true justice cannot be satisfied with punishment alone.” Instead, he insisted that criminal sanctions must prioritize the “re-education and full integration of offenders into the fabric of society,” invoking educational and treatment programs as the primary remedies for societal disorder.

During Leo’s apostolic journey in France, on September 26, Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin delivered an address at the opening of the 81st Session of the U.N. General Assembly. Framing the Vatican’s diplomatic position around the principle of human dignity as outlined in Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, Parolin called for criminal justice policies focused on rehabilitation and reintegration. Archbishop El-Kassis’s appeal followed this same line, reflecting a coordinated diplomatic initiative by the Secretariat of State at the United Nations.

The 2018 revision of Paragraph 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church under Pope Francis intensified debate over the Church’s teaching on capital punishment. The revised text declared the death penalty “inadmissible” on the grounds of the “dignity of the person” and modern penal effectiveness, while committing the Church to “its abolition worldwide.” Following his election, Pope Leo XIV reaffirmed this abolitionist trajectory, explicitly asserting that Catholics who support the death penalty cannot be considered genuinely “pro-life.”

A shift in emphasis already occurred in 1995 when Pope John Paul II published the encyclical Evangelium Vitae. While retaining the traditional doctrine regarding the state’s fundamental right to execute, John Paul II argued that, due to modern penal improvements, cases supposedly requiring capital execution for societal defense were “very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

However, for about two millennia, the Catholic Church consistently taught that civil authorities possess the moral right to inflict capital punishment for heinous crimes. In Sacred Scripture, the Apostle St. Paul explicitly affirmed the state’s coercive authority, writing in Romans 13:4 that the magistrate “does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer.” This is also known as ius gladii, namely, the right of the sword.

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Scholastic theology solidified the lawfulness of the death penalty as an act of divine and natural justice. Saint Thomas Aquinas clarified that capital punishment serves as a proportionate restorative penalty for grave crimes – like premeditated murder – fulfilling the essential expiatory, reparative, and deterrent ends of justice.

Above all, confirming this perennial teaching, the Catechism of the Council of Trent taught that judges executing lawful capital sentences do not commit murder, but rather eminently obey the Fifth Commandment by preserving civil peace and punishing evil. In other words, the death penalty is mandated by divine law; anyone who denies its permissibility is – at least materially – a heretic, since he denies an article of divine law.