"The death penalty is in no way the solution to the violence that can affect innocent people."
Thus the Pope in the preface - anticipated by Vatican News - to the volume "A Christian on Death Row. My commitment alongside the condemned" by Dale Racinella, published by Lev: «Capital executions, far from doing justice, fuel a sense of revenge that turns into a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies - continues the Pope - States should be concerned with allowing prisoners the possibility of truly changing their lives, rather than investing money and resources in suppressing them, as if they were human beings no longer worthy of living and to be disposed of».
In the book coming out on Tuesday, August 27, Recinella, 72, a former successful lawyer on Wall Street, recounts his experience that he has been carrying out since 1998, spiritually accompanying those sentenced to death as a lay chaplain in some penitentiaries in Florida together with his wife Susan . "Jesus is capable of revolutionizing our projects, our aspirations and our prospects," writes Francis in the preface, and "the human story of Dale Recinella, whom I met at a hearing, got to know better through the articles he wrote over the years for L'Osservatore Romano and now through this book that touches the heart, is a confirmation of what has been said: only in this way can we explain how it was possible that a man, with many other goals in mind to achieve in his future, became the chaplain, as a lay Christian, husband and father, of those sentenced to capital punishment."
"A very difficult, risky and arduous task to carry out," the Pontiff emphasizes, "because it touches evil in all its dimensions: the evil done to the victims, and which cannot be repaired; the evil that the condemned person is experiencing, knowing that he is destined for certain death; the evil that, with the practice of capital punishment, is instilled in society." And according to Francis, " the Jubilee itself should engage all believers to ask with a single voice for the abolition of the death penalty , a practice that, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, 'is inadmissible because it attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person!' (n. 2267)."
(Unioneonline/D)