Washington D.C., Nov 30, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Echoing the call earlier this week from Baltimore Archbishops Keeler, Most Reverend Stephen Blaire, Bishop of Stockton and President of the California Catholic Conference, released the following statement yesterday expressing strong support for an end to the death penalty in California and affirming the recent statement by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death. With California having scheduled three inmate executions over the next three months,
"The California Catholic Conference of Bishops strongly supports an end to the death penalty and affirms the statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death, which was issued earlier this month.
"As Catholic bishops, we teach and preach the Gospel vision of a 'culture of life.' We believe that we are created in God's image, which compels us to teach a consistent ethic of life and obligates us to preach that the use of the death penalty does not protect human life nor promote human dignity.
This call came after Virginia's state governor has spared the life of a convicted killer who would have been the 1000th person executed in the US since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976.