The book, A Christian on Death Row: My Commitment to Those Condemned, by Dale Recinella is set for publication by the Vatican Publishing House on Tuesday, August 27.
“Capital executions, far from bringing justice, fuel a sense of revenge that becomes a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies,” the pontiff wrote in the preface.
“States should focus on allowing prisoners the opportunity to truly change their lives, rather than investing money and resources in their execution, as if they were human beings no longer worthy of living and to be disposed of,” said the pope.
In the book, Recinella, 72, formerly a successful lawyer on Wall Street, talks about his work since 1998 as a lay chaplain aiding inmates on death row in Florida, an experience he has shared with wife Susan.
“Jesus is capable of revolutionising our plans, our aspirations and our perspectives,” the pontiff also wrote in the preface.
“The story of Dale Recinella, whom I met during an audience and have come to know better through the articles he has written over the years for L’Osservatore Romano and now through this deeply moving book, confirms what I have said.
“Only in this way can we understand how a man who had other goals in mind for his future became the chaplain—as a lay Christian, husband and father—to those condemned to death.
“His is an extremely difficult, risky and arduous task, because it touches evil in all its dimensions.
“The evil committed against the victims, which cannot be undone; the evil the condemned person is living through, knowing they are destined for certain death; the evil that, through the practice of the death penalty, is instilled in society.”
According to the pontiff, “the Jubilee should commit all believers to collectively call for the abolition of the death penalty, a practice that, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person!’”
In order to support such a thesis, Pope Francis quotes The Idiot, in which Fyodor Dostoevsky “succinctly encapsulates the logical and moral unsustainability of the death penalty, saying, ‘It is a violation of the human soul, nothing more!’
“It is written: ‘Thou shalt not kill’, and yet, because he has killed, others kill him.
“No, it is something that should not exist.”
The pontiff talks about Recinella’s work as lay chaplain as “a great gift” for the Church and US society, where he works and lives.
“His commitment as a lay chaplain, particularly in such an inhumane place as death row, is a living and passionate testimony to the infinite mercy of God,” he wrote.
ANSA
