Pope Francis says the Church is now officially against capital punishment, but it wasn’t always this way
Pope Francis has changed Catholic Church teaching to fully reject the death penalty, the Vatican announced Thursday, saying it would work to abolish capital punishment worldwide. The change addresses several sentences of the catechism, the compendium of Catholic beliefs, and it sharply amplifies the church’s opposition to the death penalty.
But the Church’s stance hasn’t always been so clear or progressive.
The above video gives a brief history of the church’s complicated relationship with capital punishment.
