Pope Francis is changing the Catechism of the Catholic Church in order to declare that the death penalty is “inadmissible” – in other words, always wrong. It may never be used. The Catechism was already opposed to capital punishment: in 1997 St John Paul II amended its most recent version to declare that the cases in which it was permissible were “very rare, if not practically non-existent”. Now Pope Francis has said that these cases are, in fact, non-existent. He accepts that this is a change to Church teaching, citing it as an example of the “development of doctrine”.
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pope francis is changing the catechism of the catholic church in order to declare that the death penalty is “inadmissible” – in other words,...
The Catholic Herald
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