Pope, in book preface, lauds US chaplain, deplores death penalty
August 20, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: Pope Francis has written a preface to a book by Dale Recinella, a lay chaplain in Florida’s prisons.
The Pope lauded Recinella for his ministry to death row inmates: “his is an extremely difficult, risky, and arduous task, because it touches evil in all its dimensions: the evil committed against the victims, which cannot be undone; the evil the condemned person is living through, knowing they are destined for certain death; the evil that, through the practice of the death penalty, is instilled in society.”
The Pontiff also stated that the “death penalty is in no way a solution to the violence that can strike innocent people. Capital executions, far from bringing justice, fuel a sense of revenge that becomes a dangerous poison for the body of our civil societies.”
The book, Nel braccio della morte, was first published in Italian in 2012 and is a translation of Recinella’s Now I Walk on Death Row: A Wall Street Finance Lawyer Stumbles into the Arms of A Loving God (2011). The preface, dated July 18, was made public on August 18.
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