On October 10th, we commemorated World Day Against the Death Penalty, a day when people around the globe unite their voices to call for the abolition of capital punishment. Every year on this day, communities host prayer vigils, press conferences, and educational events to elevate the critical importance of ending the death penalty. To commemorate the day, Pope Leo XIV posted on his official X account that the Catholic Church holds the death penalty to be “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
This year’s World Day Against the Death Penalty comes at a time when executions are in the U.S. headlines: first, Tennessee’s second botched execution in five months and the unprecedented survival of Christa Pike; second, President Trump declared that the planned firing squad execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan will not be livestreamed, reversing an earlier announcement from the Pentagon. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the Archbishop for the Military Services USA, issued a statement obliging “any Catholics assigned to the firing squad” for the execution of Hasan “to request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church.”