Pope Condemns Capital Punishment as US Controversially Plans to Livestream Firing Squad Execution

Pope Leo XIV describes capital punishment as an ‘attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’ in a post on X.

Published On 10 Oct 202610 Oct 2026

Pope Leo XIV has declared the death penalty “inadmissible,” speaking out as the United States announces plans to livestream an execution by firing squad.

Marking the World Day Against the Death Penalty on Saturday, the pope reiterated the Catholic Church’s teaching on capital punishment, writing on X that it is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”

“The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment,” his post stated.

“Effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption,” the leader of the Catholic Church added.

The American Pope’s comments come just days after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on Thursday that the firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, scheduled for December 3, will be livestreamed.

Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in a shooting at the Fort Hood military base in 2009.

Pope Leo did not specifically refer to the planned execution or last month’s botched execution attempt on Christa Pike, who survived two doses of lethal injection in Tennessee.

However, his post came hours after his top deputy, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, told Vatican News that the plan to livestream Hasan’s execution was “unacceptable.”

It was Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, who in 2018 first amended official Catholic teaching to declare capital punishment “inadmissible” in all circumstances.

Previously, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official compendium of church teaching, stated that the church did not exclude recourse to capital punishment “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

The planned livestream of Hasan’s execution has sparked outrage across the US political divide. Republican representative Austin Scott said he supported executing Hasan, but that “livestreaming executions is what Jihadists do. America is better than that.”

Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Hasan should “face justice,” but argued that public executions are “the kind of thing that Iran and the Taliban do. Is this who we want to be associated with?”

On Thursday, a Pentagon official confirmed the plans, but on Friday, Vice President JD Vance, who is a practising Catholic, expressed doubt on whether the livestream would go ahead, telling reporters that if it does, “I’m not going to be watching it.”

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