Being 'merciful like the Father' isn't a slogan – it's a way of life, Pope says
Vatican City, Sep 21, 2016 / 08:34 am (CNA/EWTN News) - On Wednesday, Pope Francis reflected on the theme of the Jubilee of Mercy, “Merciful like the Father,” telling pilgrims that while imitating God’s love can seem impossible, it’s genuine effort, rather than quantity, that matters.
To be “merciful like the Father” is not just “a slogan for effect, but a life commitment,” the Pope said Sept. 21.
However, he also questioned whether Jesus’ words to his disciples in the Gospel of Luke are actually realistic, asking “is it really possible to love like God loves and to be merciful like him?”
When looking back at the story of salvation history, Francis noted that God’s entire revelation to man consists of his tireless love for humanity which culminates with Jesus’ death on the Cross.
“So great a love can be expressed only by God,” he said, explaining that Jesus’ call for humanity to be merciful like the Father “is not a question of quantity. Instead it is a summons to be signs, channels and witnesses to his mercy.”
“And the Church can’t but be the sacrament of God’s mercy in the world, in every time and across all humanity,” he said, adding that “every Christian is called to be a witness of mercy, and this takes place on the path to holiness.”
Pope Francis spoke to the thousands of pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly general audience. He has dedicated his catechesis to the topic of mercy in honor of the ongoing Holy Year of Mercy, which takes its theme from the day’s Gospel reading from Luke.
In his address, the Pope said that while “of course God is perfect,” if he is seen only in this way, it becomes impossible for humanity to strive toward that model of “absolute perfection.”
Instead, having God “before our eyes as merciful allows us to better understand what his perfection consists of and spurs us to be like him; full of love, compassion and mercy.”
Francis then asked what it means for the disciples to be merciful. The answer, he said, was given by Jesus in two verbs: “to forgive” and “to give.”
Mercy is expressed “above all in forgiveness,” he said, adding that “forgiveness in fact is the pillar that holds up the life of the Christian community, because in this is shown the gratuitousness of the love with which God has first loved us.”
“All Christians must forgive! Why? Because they have been forgiven. All of us, each one of us here in the Square, have been forgiven,” the Pope said, explaining that “if God has forgiven me, why shouldn't I forgive others? Am I greater than God?”
When it comes to giving, Francis noted that God always “gives well beyond our merits,” but will be even more generous with those who were generous on earth.
Jesus, he said, “doesn’t say what will happen to those who did not give,” but sends a warning when he uses the image of “the measure: with the measure of love that we give, it is we ourselves who decide how we will be judged, how we will be loved.”
Because of this, “merciful love is the only path to take,” Francis said, stressing the need for everyone to be a little more merciful and a little less hasty to speak poorly of others, to be judgmental and to “pluck” at others with criticism, envy and jealousy.
“We must forgive, be merciful and live our lives in love,” he said, explaining that by doing so, the heart enlarges with love rather than selfishness and anger, which makes the heart
Do something about forced migration, cardinal exhorts UN
New York City, N.Y., Sep 20, 2016 / 01:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News) - The Vatican Secretary of State pleaded Monday for an increased commitment from the international community in addressing the root causes of forced migration, particularly those which are man-made, such as war and arms trading.
“Since human choices provoke conflicts and wars, it is well within our power and responsibility to address this root cause that drives millions to become refugees, forced migrants and internally displaced persons,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Sept. 19 at the United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York.
“The greatest challenge before us,” Cardinal Parolin said, “is to identify and act on the root causes that force millions of people to leave their homes, their livelihoods, their families and their countries, risking their very lives and those of their loved ones in the search for safety, peace and better lives in foreign lands.”
Cardinal Parolin highlighted the increase in religious persecution as a cause of displacement, acknowledging that while “other groups are heavily targeted, many reports confirm that Christians are by far the most persecuted faith group,” and that many are even harassed in refugee settings.
“We must not abandon them,” he urged.
“Addressing the root causes of displacement of peoples,” Cardinal Parolin said, “requires strength and political will.”
“As Pope Francis has said, this 'would mean rethinking entrenched habits and practices, beginning with issues involving the arms trade, the provision of raw materials and energy, investment, policies of financing and sustainable development, and even the grave scourge of corruption.'”
Where the likelihood of illegal use is “real and present,” the Holy See has “repeatedly called to limit strictly and to control the manufacture and sale of weapons,” Cardinal Parolin stated.
“The proliferation of any type of weapons aggravates situations of conflict and results in huge human and material costs, provoking large movements of refugees and migrants and profoundly undermining development and the search for lasting peace.”
Cardinal Parolin stressed that eliminating the structural causes of poverty and hunger must include protection of the environment, assurance of dignified labor for all, access to quality education, and protection of the family, which he said is “an essential element in human and social development.”
Diplomacy and dialogue are the way to resolve questions, Cardinal Parolin affirmed, praising the summit for addressing “more effective ways of sharing responsibility” in the face of the refugee and migrant crisis.
While they are not recognized as refugees by international conventions, Cardinal Parolin added, “the Holy See feels itself compelled to draw urgent attention to the plight of those migrants fleeing from situations of extreme poverty and environmental degradation,” as well.
“They suffer greatly and are most vulnerable to human trafficking and various forms of human slavery,” he said.
“The Holy See thus pleads for a common commitment on the part of individual governments and the international community to bring to an end all fighting, hatred and violence, and to pursue peace and reconciliation.”
END
Amid communist rule, a Catholic university opens in Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sep 21, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News) - After 40 years, the first Catholic Church-operated university opened in Vietnam since the advent of communism in the country.
"The institute aims to enhance theological knowledge and competence among all priests, religious and laypeople," Bishop Joseph Dinh Duc Dao, rector of the institute, said at the opening ceremony according to UCA News.
There have not been Church-run schools in the country since 1975, when communist rule took over the country.
In 1954-1955, Vietnam was split between the North, which was ruled by communists, and the South, which had a Catholic president. For a 300-day period during that time, called Operation Passage to Freedom by the United States Navy, free movement was allowed between the (then) two countries. During that period, hundreds of thousands of people fled North Vietnam to South Vietnam, including many Catholics who feared persecution under the communist rule of the north, and felt safe under the Catholic president in the south.
However, after the fall of Saigon in the South at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the country was reunited under communist rule, and Catholics lost many of the freedoms they had sought, including control of or involvement in education.
In the 1990s, the government began to relax some of the restrictions. Some orders of nuns started running kindergartens and some wealthy individuals set up private, Catholic schools, but there were no upper level schools being run by the Church.
The bishops of Vietnam have officially been pushing for a church-operated university since 2011, when they wrote a letter to government officials asking them to allow for Catholic schools.
"It is recommended that the government opens the door to the religious people of good will who aspire to be involved in school education, which is considered the key to open the path for a bright future in the country," the bishops said in their letter.
Then, in December 2015, Archbishop Paul Bui Van Doc of Ho Chi Minh City announced that he had received permission from the government to open the first Catholic University by the fall of 2016.
"The relationship between the Vatican and the Vietnam government is becoming better and better, so we asked and they accepted," the archbishop said at the time.
While the first class size is fairly small - 23 students, mostly priests, all studying theology - the school is hoping to grow and diversify in the near future.
"After that, in the future, maybe a lot," Archbishop Doc said.
"It's possible a thousand or more than a thousand" students will eventually join the university.
There are currently over 5 million Catholics in Vietnam, which makes up between 6-7 percent of the population.
Vatican Insider reported that the school will offer bachelor's degrees, licenses and doctorates and will eventually offer courses in psychology, sciences, canon law, among others, and that the university's structure and statutes had also received approval from both the government and Vatican.
Bishop Dao told Vatican Insider in December that he considered it a work of mercy that the school would open during the Jubilee year.
“It is a work of God, with our strengths we helped make it happen,” he said.
“It is a work of mercy that we will carry out in the Holy Year with renewed gratitude towards God and with compassion: the service of education implies a deep attention to others.”
Pope Francis condemns 'inexcusable violence'
in murder of Mexican priests
by Elise Harris
Vatican City, Sep 21, 2016 / 06:41 am (CNA/EWTN News) - After hearing of the murder of two priests in Mexico, Pope Francis sent a telegram to the country’s bishops condemning the violent act, offering his prayers as a sign of closeness to the community and families affected.
“Deeply distressed upon receiving the sad news of the assassination of Reverends Alejo Nabor Jimenez Juarez and Jose Alfredo Suarez de la Cruz…the Holy Father expresses his sincerest condolences,” read the telegram, sent Sept. 20.
Signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the telegram voiced the Pope’s closeness to Bishop Trinidad Zapata of Papantla, where the priests served, as well as to all clergy, religious communities and faithful of the diocese.
He offered his prayers “for the eternal repose of these priests of Christ, victims of an inexcusable violence.”
On Monday, the bodies of Mexican priests Alejo Nabor Jiménez Juárez and José Alfredo Suárez de la Cruz were found murdered in a field after having been kidnapped from their parish.
They were kidnapped the previous day from Our Lady of Fatima Parish in the city of Poza Rica, a town located in the north of the Mexican Gulf state of Veracruz. The bodies of the two priests were found the following day in a field in the nearby city of Papantla.
A third man, identified by Veracruz authorities, was kidnapped alongside the two priests, but escaped and was found alive. Veracruz officials said that he had been placed under protection.
Poza Rica and surrounding areas in Veracruz have been the locus of drug and associated cartel violence for years, but it is yet unclear why the priests were targeted. Priests have also been the target of violence elsewhere in Mexico.
Pope Francis recently condemned the escalation of drug activity and violence in Mexico during his visit to the country earlier this year, telling a group of laborers Feb. 17 to work toward finding adequate means to end “the cycle of drugs and violence.”
He said the lack of decent work and opportunity leads to situations of poverty, which then becomes “the best breeding ground for the young to fall into the cycle of drug trafficking and violence.”
This, the Pope said, “is a luxury which no one can afford; we cannot allow the present and future of Mexico to be alone and abandoned.”
In his telegram to Bishop Zapata, the Pope voiced his “firm condemnation of all that attacks life and the dignity of people,” and urged the clergy and pastoral agents of the diocese to continue their mission with enthusiasm by imitating Christ, “despite the obstacles.”
Pope Francis declares care for creation a new work of mercy
Vatican City, Sep 1, 2016 / 04:00 am (CNA/EWTN News) - On Thursday Pope Francis yet again showed his knack for surprises and his openness to “newness” by adding the care of creation to the traditional sets of both the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
“We usually think of the works of mercy individually and in relation to a specific initiative: hospitals for the sick, soup kitchens for the hungry, shelters for the homeless, schools for those to be educated, the confessional and spiritual direction for those needing counsel and forgiveness.”
However, when we look at the works of mercy as a whole, “we see that the object of mercy is human life itself and everything it embraces,” the Pope said in his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, published Sept. 1.
Since human life itself and all that it entails naturally includes caring for creation, Francis proposed “a complement” to the two traditional sets of seven corporal and spiritual works of mercy.
“May the works of mercy also include care for our common home,” he said, explaining that as a spiritual work of mercy, care for creation “calls for a grateful contemplation of God’s world which allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us.”
As a corporal work of mercy, he said, it “requires simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness and makes itself felt in every action that seeks to build a better world.”
Instituted by Pope Francis in 2015 shortly after the release of his environmental encyclical “Laudato Si,” the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation takes place each year on Sept. 1.
Francis’ decision to implement the event is in keeping with themes expressed in the encyclical, and is also seen as a sign of unity with the Orthodox Church, which established September 1 as a day to celebrate creation in 1989.
The seven traditional corporal works of mercy include concrete acts of charity such as feeding the hungry; giving drink to the thirsty; clothing the naked; sheltering the homeless; visiting the imprisoned; visiting the sick and burying the dead.
The spiritual works, on the other hand, entail actions like instructing the ignorant; counseling the doubtful; admonishing the sinner; bearing wrongs patiently; forgiving offenses willingly; comforting the sorrowful and praying for the living and the dead.
Caring for creation, then, marks a new opportunity not only to get a green thumb, but to practice mercy while doing so.
At a Sept. 1 news conference announcing Pope Francis’ message for the 2016 event, Cardinal Peter Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and president-elect for the newly established dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said a new work of mercy dedicated to creation reflects Pope Francis’ intentions in writing Laudato Si.
After evaluating and amending our own lives in terms of how we personally care for creation, “Pope Francis is calling us toward a new work of mercy.”
“Nothing unites us to God more than an act of mercy, for it is by mercy that the Lord forgives our sins and gives us the grace to practice acts of mercy in his name,” the cardinal said, quoting the Pope’s environmental encyclical.
“This is really the final step of ecological conversion, a true internalization of an ecological sensibility,” he said, echoing Pope Francis’ own words that that caring for creation is truly a “complement (to) both the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.”
Francis’ message “is the next logical step” after writing Laudato Si, Cardinal Turkson said, because “it is showing us how to internalize its teaching in our lives and in our world.”
The Pope, he said, “is asking us to live Laudato Si. Are we ready to respond to the Holy Father’s invitation – and challenge?”
In comments to journalists, Terence Ward, author of the book “The Guardian of Mercy” on famous Renaissance painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s work “The Seven Works of Mercy,” and who was also present at the Sept. 1 news conference, said the new work of mercy is meant to be a concrete action that “helps you change your way of thinking.”
“It's not about changing the world tomorrow, it's about changing ourselves and how we look at the world,” he said, explaining that for Pope Francis, care for creation is “it's an overarching work of mercy from which all others follow.”
To give tainted water or food to the hungry and thirsty “doesn't make sense,” nor does sheltering someone in a house about to fall apart, he said, noting that the Pope is inviting us to reflect on the new work and how it can be put to action in our daily lives.
In his message, titled "Show Mercy to our Common Home" and which is divided into 6 points, Pope Francis noted the frequent remarks of Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople on the need to care for our common home, drawing attention “to the moral and spiritual crisis at the root of environmental problems.”
Quoting his encyclical Laudato Si, Francis cautioned that “God gave us a bountiful garden, but we have turned it into a polluted wasteland of debris, desolation and filth.”
“We must not be indifferent or resigned to the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of ecosystems, often caused by our irresponsible and selfish behavior,” he said, adding that “2015 was the warmest year on record, and 2016 will likely be warmer still.”
Mankind is called to “till and keep” the earth in “a balanced and respectful way,” he said, noting that “to till too much, to keep too little, is to sin.”
He encouraged Christians to make an examination of conscience, evaluating the ways in they have contributed to “the disfigurement and destruction of creation,” given that “we all generate small ecological damage.”
After doing a sincere examination of conscience, “we can confess our sins against the Creator, against creation, and against our brothers and sisters,” he said, explaining that we confess sins against the environment because “we are penitent and desire to change.”
The grace received from confession must then be put into action with concrete ways of thinking and acting that are more respectful of creation, he said, suggesting the reduction of water use, recycling, carpooling, turning off unused lights and limiting the amount of food cooked to only what will be consumed as ideas to start with.
Care of creation should also contribute “to shaping the culture and society in which we live,” Pope Francis said, adding that economics, politics, society and culture “cannot be dominated by thinking only of the short-term and immediate financial or electoral gains.”
“Instead, they urgently need to be redirected to the common good, which includes sustainability and care for creation.”
Francis concluded his message by stressing that despite our faults and the daunting challenges posed by caring for the environment, “we never lose heart.”
The Creator, he said, “does not abandon us; he never forsakes his loving plan or repents of having created us…for he has united himself definitively to our earth, and his love constantly impels us to find new ways forward.”
Pope Francis: Confession is encounter with God's 're-creating mercy'
Vatican City, Aug 22, 2016 / 12:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News) - Pope Francis commended the sacrament of confession as the prime means of encountering God's mercy in his message sent Monday to Italy's National Liturgical Week, which is being held in Gubbio.
In Confession “there is fulfilled the encounter with the re-creating mercy of God whence come new women and men who announce the good life of the Gospel by a life which is reconciled and reconciling,” the Pope said in a message signed by the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and sent Aug. 22 to Bishop Claudio Maniago of Castellaneta, president of Italy's Center for Liturgy.
The National Liturgical Week is focusing this year on “liturgy as a place of mercy.”
Pope Francis noted that this theme “helps one perceive that all the liturgy is a place where mercy is encountered and welcomed in order to be given; a place where the great mystery of reconciliation is made present, announced, celebrated, and communicated.”
While each sacrament and sacramental show forth God's mercy “according to the diverse circumstances of life … The gift of Mercy is resplendent in a particular way in the sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation,” he said.
“We are reconciled so as to reconcile. The mercy of the Father cannot be confined in 'intimistic' and 'self-consoling' attitudes, because its potency is demonstrated in the renewal of persons, rendering them capable of offering to others a living experience of the same gift.”
The Pope exhorted that “based on the belief that one is pardoned in order to pardon, we must be witnesses of mercy in every environment, provoking a desire and a capacity for pardon.”
“This is a task to which we are all called,” he said, “especially in front of the rancor in which too many are entrapped, who need to rediscover the joy of interior serenity and the taste of peace.”
Pope Francis reflected that Confession “must therefore be perceived as an expression of the 'Church in outreach', as a 'door' not only by which to re-enter after having been away, but also a 'threshold' open to the various peripheries of humanity ever more in need of compassion.”
The message concluded with the Pope's hope that the celebration of Italy's Liturgical Week would promote an “ecclesial and personal life full of mercy and compassion.”
India gears up for Mother Teresa canonization celebrations
Calcutta, India, Aug 22, 2016 / 02:24 pm (CNA) - Mother Teresa will be canonized on Sept. 4, and a global film festival aims to screen 23 movies to mark the event.
The Mother Teresa International Film Festival will feature seven India-made movies, along with entries from the U.S., France, the U.K., Spain, Italy, Canada and Japan, Can-India News reports.
It will be held at the Calcutta state government-run Nandan multiplex, a film and cultural center in Calcutta. The Aug. 26-29 festival will open with the American documentary “Mother Teresa.”
The festival is organized by the Indian chapter of SIGNIS, the World Catholic Association for Communication. The festival is planned to travel around India and then to different countries, Vatican Radio says.
Other planned celebrations for the nun's canonization include a Mass of thanksgiving to be celebrated Oct. 2 at the Netaji Indoor Stadium. Among the attendees is India's Vice President Hamid Ansari. A civic program will follow the Mass.
The state government has organized a Nov. 4 homage to the woman who will become St. Teresa of Calcutta. Other plans include the installation of a life-size bronze statue of Mother Teresa at the Bishop of Calcutta's residence.
The Albanian-born Mother Teresa joined the Sisters of Loretto at age 17 and was sent to Caluctta, India. While recuperating from an illness, she received what she called “an order” from God to leave her convent and live among the poor.
She began working in the slums, teaching poor children, and treating the sick in their homes. A year later, some of her former students joined her, and together they took in men, women and children who were dying in the gutters along the streets.
In 1950, Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity as a congregation of the Diocese of Calcutta. Mother Teresa's work and spirituality went on to draw worldwide admiration. She died Sept. 5, 1997 at the age of 87. She was beatified just six years later by St. John Paul II Oct. 19, 2003.
In UK, abortion clinic inspections have consequences
London, England, Aug 24, 2016 / 12:39 am (CNA/EWTN News) - British inspectors have barred some abortions at Marie Stopes International due to concerns about safety and informed consent for abortion.
Clara Watson, a spokeswoman for the Life charity that helps women in crisis pregnancies, said the move calls into question about the safety of the abortion providers’ clinics around the world.
“It is absolutely scandalous that Marie Stopes International, which likes to talk about women dying from unsafe abortions, is itself being rapped for exposing patients to potential harm,” Watson said, according to the Catholic Herald. “This is not the first time that Marie Stopes clinics have been in the news.”
In 2015, a doctor and two nurses were charged with manslaughter when a 32-year-old woman from Dublin died hours after undergoing an abortion at a west London Marie Stopes clinic in January 2012.
The England Care Quality Commission (CQC) said that its routine inspections of clinics prompted the concerns. It made unannounced inspections of Marie Stopes International’s corporate headquarters in England and then its call center, the U.K. newspaper The Guardian reports.
The commission said it raised concerns about the provider’s corporate and clinical governance arrangements and patient safety protocols.
It said that there were not adequate protocols to ensure girls under 18 and other vulnerable women could give informed consent, so Marie Stopes must stop performing abortions on these women. It has also suspended any abortions carried out under general anesthetic or sedation after 12 weeks into pregnancy.
The care commission’s action drew further response from pro-life advocates.
“Abortion is always destructive of the lives of unborn children, but when prosecuted as it has been by some abortionists, it can leave women scarred as well,” said Peter D. Williams, executive officer at Right to Life U.K.
He said he hopes the commission action can open a debate about under-regulation of abortion in the U.K., the Catholic Herald reports.
Prof. Edward Baker, the deputy chief inspector of hospitals at the Care Quality Commission, explained the commission action.
“We believe that the action taken is appropriate to address our concerns. We will continue to monitor these services very closely and we will not hesitate to take further action, if needed,” he said Aug. 19.
Baker added that the commission’s priority is “to ensure that patients get safe, high-quality and compassionate care.”
Marie Stopes International chief executive Simon Cooke said its U.K. branch agreed to suspend some abortions voluntarily. He said the suspension would allow the branch “to resolve areas of concern in its training and governance procedures.”
About 250 women per week who would normally seek an abortion through Marie Stopes are now going elsewhere, including to the U.K.’s largest abortion provider, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service.
The Marie Stopes abortions can only begin again once it assures inspectors that it has made the required changes. The restrictions also apply to the Marie Stopes clinic in Belfast.
However, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children charged that the abortions are already illegal under laws it says permits abortion only when there is a health risk.
“Pregnant women are suffering intolerably,” charged Paul Tully, the society’s general secretary. “The CQC is defending illegal government abortion policy which kills children and sometimes women too. Women are not being offered proper support when facing difficulties in pregnancy - simply being channeled into the abortion industry funded by the Department of Health.”
“Abortion is an inherently risky interference in the natural pregnancy process,” he said.
Previous oversight of U.K. abortion clinics found that clinics were side-stepping a requirement that two doctors approve each individual abortion. Some clinics had doctors pre-sign the required paperwork so that in effect only one doctor gave approval for an individual abortion case.
Don't bring back the death penalty, New Mexico bishops plead
Albuquerque, N.M., Aug 23, 2016 / 06:34 am (CNA/EWTN News) - The Catholic bishops of New Mexico are speaking up against a proposal to reintroduce capital punishment in the state, saying that respect for human life must be consistent.
“We, the Catholic Bishops of New Mexico, in one voice, once again echo the teaching of the Church that life is sacred,” the bishops of Santa Fe, Las Cruces and Gallup said in a joint statement Aug. 18.
“There is one seamless teaching on God’s gift of life that must be protected from birth to natural death,” they said. “It is always tragic and sad when a member of the community is murdered. These senseless acts must be prevented by calling for systemic change in society beginning with our youngest children. Crime can be prevented, and this is done by an investment in social capital.”
The bishops responded to New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez saying that she will push during next year’s legislative session to bring back the death penalty in the state.
Martinez had earlier backed such legislation, but ceased actively supporting it after it failed in the legislature several years ago.
She is now renewing her push to reinstate the death penalty, telling the Albuquerque Journal, “A society that fails to adequately protect and defend those who protect all of us is a society that will be undone and unsafe.”
Her announcement comes after two high-profile murders in New Mexico: the recent killing of a police officer during a traffic stop, as well as the murder of an 11-year-old Navajo girl in May.
A spokesperson for Martinez said the legislation – which has not yet been introduced – would apply at least to those who murder police officers and children.
Capital punishment was previously legal in New Mexico, but only one execution occurred since 1960. Use of the death penalty in the state was repealed by 2009 legislation and replaced with a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.
The New Mexico bishops noted that they had “applauded the State Legislature for the progress that was made when we ended the morally untenable practice of the death penalty on March 18, 2009.”
“This repeal of the death penalty was a milestone, moving New Mexico from a culture of violence to a culture of peace, justice, and love,” they said.
The bishops cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says, “If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.”
They also pointed to the words of Pope John Paul II, who wrote in Evangelium vitea that “Today, in fact, given the means at the State’s disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender today…are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
Pope Francis has called for an end to the death penalty, the New Mexico bishops pointed out, as did Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II.
Furthermore, they noted that more and more states are ending the death penalty. Five states have ended the use of capital punishment in the last five years, citing its expense, failure to allow for rehabilitation, and the potential for error.
“The State created life in prison without the possibility of parole. This renders a perpetrator harmless to society,” the bishops of New Mexico stressed. “We oppose Governor Susana Martinez’ plan to reinstate the death penalty and call on the Legislature to reject the legislation.”