Bishops in multiple U.S. states are leading efforts to spare the lives of prisoners on death row. More than 1,600 prisoners have been executed since the death penalty’s re-legalization by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. The state of Texas has executed 596 prisoners since the late 1970s. Missouri has executed 102 people over the last 50 years.
Jamie Morris, the executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, told the Catholic News Agency that the state bishops “send a clemency request for every prisoner set to be executed, either through a letter from the Missouri Catholic Conference or through a joint letter of the bishops.”
“We also highlight every upcoming execution through our MCC publications and encourage our network to contact the governor to ask for clemency,” he said. Individual dioceses, meanwhile, carry out education and outreach to inform the faithful of the Church’s teaching on the death penalty.
In 2018, the Vatican revised its teaching on the death penalty, holding that though capital punishment was “long considered an appropriate response” to some crimes, evolving standards and more effective methods of imprisonment and detention mean the death penalty is now “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
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