Rome, Italy, Oct 2, 2010 / 03:27 am
The Vatican’s spokesman has invited humanity to put the death penalty in the past. Rejecting the gravest punishment of all in every one of its forms, he said that today mankind has moved beyond any necessity to kill.
During his weekly Vatican television editorial, Fr. Federico Lombardi voiced his abhorrence of all forms of the death penalty and declared himself roundly contrary to it.
Stating his position against capital punishment, he said “I don’t want it” in any country, in any of its forms, for any person or in any circumstance, “whether painful or painless ... in public or in secret.” This, he explained, is because he “seeks a greater justice.”
For the benefit of all people, he observed, “it is good to walk this street to affirm ever more ... the dignity of the person and of human life, of which it is not up to us to dispose.”