Pope Leo XIV, His Predecessors & the Death Penalty

Recalling the late Pope Francis’s reign, when the Catholic world convulsed with criticism of him, I have wondered, now that that period has passed, when Pope Leo XIV would be dragged onto the carpet. The tumult surrounding Francis was at times warranted, though on occasion gratuitous. Nevertheless, the late Pontiff did encourage making messes, and he made a few of his own. Leo, not simply by comparison but in his own right, has been a calm sea following a tempest. Still, we might expect him to say or do something to stir up turbulence — and at last he has. The occasion? Last September he told reporters, “Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion,’ but says, ‘I’m in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life.”

One commentator, Peter Kwasniewski, expressed disappointment. In his weekly email blast “Dr. K’s Roundup” (Oct. 3, 2025), he opined that “Leo XIV has shown that he continues to hold the error he held as a cardinal, namely, that the death penalty is intrinsically immoral and to be put on the same level as abortion.” By intrinsically immoral, Kwasniewski presumably means immoral in itself, regardless of any circumstance. Abortion, as a form of direct and intentional killing of the innocent, is always and everywhere intrinsically immoral, and in no circumstance or set of circumstances can it be condoned. The death penalty is not like abortion. According to the common historical Catholic understanding, the justice or injustice of this punishment depends on circumstances. The direct and intentional judicial killing of an innocent man, for instance, is intrinsically evil; it can never be justified. Yet it is an abuse that does not in itself obviate the inherent justice of the death penalty in the right circumstances.

Such reasoning, as far as it goes, is sound. In previous papal teaching, as well as the general tradition of the Church, we find justifications for the use of the death penalty for perpetrators of certain crimes. Most famously, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, promulgated under Pope St. Pius V, notes that “another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent.” Pope St. John Paul II’s 1997 revision of section 2267 of the original 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church does not call the death penalty intrinsically evil but merely says that “if bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”

Here we find an if that qualifies a should in the use of the death penalty, thus acknowledging the possibility of its just application in certain circumstances — namely, those in which “bloodless means” are insufficient “to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons.” Thus, John Paul’s revision is consonant with the general thrust of the magisterium and tradition, which, in justifying the death penalty, do not call for it in all circumstances, even those in which its application may be strictly just.