By Jennifer Reyes Lay and Martha Ann Kirk
This is awesome! And gives me so much material and credibility in my upcoming presentation on the movement to abolish the prison industrial complex at the Call To Action Conference in a couple weeks.
Pope Francis called for abolition of the death penalty as well as life imprisonment, and denounced what he called a "penal populism" that promises to solve society's problems by punishing crime instead of pursuing social justice.
"It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples' lives from an unjust aggressor," the pope said Thursday in a meeting with representatives of the International Association of Penal Law.
"All Christians and people of good will are thus called today to struggle not only for abolition of the death penalty, whether it be legal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty. And this, I connect with life imprisonment," he said. "Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty."
Read more: http://ncronline.org/blogs/francis-chronicles/pope-francis-calls-abolishing-death-penalty-and-life-imprisonment
The Pope released a strong mandate http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-no-to-death-penalty-and-to-inhuman-prison-con on October 24, 2014, against the use of the death penalty: "It is impossible to imagine that states today cannot make use of another means than capital punishment to defend peoples' lives from an unjust aggressor … All Christians and people of olegal or illegal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their liberty.”
Let us join together and answer the Holy Father’s call to respect the human dignity of all people. Now is the moment to ask our country to turn away from a culture of violence and revenge. http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/6279/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1310177
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