Pope Francis and outgoing US president Joe Biden spoke by phone yesterday about various current issues, beginning with peace efforts in view of Christmas. The US leader thanked the Pope for “his work to promote human rights and protect religious freedom.” He then accepted an invitation to visit the Vatican in January. A theme close to the Pope’s heart is the fate of US death row inmates for whom he launched an appeal at the Angelus on 8 December.
By Salvatore Cernuzio
Pope Francis and US President Joe Biden spoke with each other in a phone call overnight on 19 December. The conversation took place as the President Biden concludes his term in office and is the latest of the many times they spoken or met in recent years.
The two leaders discussed “efforts to advance peace around the world during the holiday season,” according to a White House statement. The memo stated that Biden “thanked the Pope for his continued advocacy to alleviate global suffering, including his work to advance human rights and protect religious freedoms.” The President “also graciously accepted His Holiness Pope Francis’s invitation to visit the Vatican next month.” His announced visit to the Vatican will be his final one before leaving the White House on 20 January, when his successor Donald Trump will be sworn in as the new US president.
Pope’s concern for those on death row
One of the issues that is particularly close to the Pope’s heart is the fate of prisoners on death row. This topic has always been important to Pope Francis, who in 2018 amended paragraph 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to reaffirm the inadmissibility of the death penalty under any circumstances, because—he explained—human dignity remains intact even when a person commits a grave crime.
Hopes during the Jubilee
In his video message for his monthly prayer intention in September, 2022, Pope Francis reiterated his “no” to a measure that does not bring justice but fosters vengeance. Earlier this month, he again highlighted the issue in anticipation of the Jubilee, a time of hope and mercy during which—as he wrote in the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee Year, Spes Non Confundit—he hopes for concrete steps such as the cancellation of foreign debt for poor countries and the abolition of the death penalty worldwide (as of 2022, more than 50 countries continue to use capital punishment). The Pope has described the death penalty as an act “at odds with Christian faith” and one that “eliminates all hope for forgiveness and rehabilitation.”
Angelus appeal
During the Angelus on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December, he addressed the faithful asking them to “pray for the prisoners who are on death row in the United States. (…)
“Let us pray,” he said, “that their sentence be commuted, changed. Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.”
US Catholic Bishops’ appeal
Following the Pope’s words, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued an immediate appeal to all Catholics in the US, urging them to ask outgoing President Biden to commute the death sentences of forty individuals currently on federal death row to life imprisonment.
Catholic Mobilizing Network
Before this, the Catholic Mobilizing Network (CNN), a national Catholic organization advocating for the abolition of the death penalty in the U.S., launched a campaign to commute the sentences of 40 people currently held in federal prisons.
According to Executive Director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, for President Biden—who had already imposed a temporary moratorium on federal executions in June 2021 (a pause Trump promised to overturn)—this is a unique and final opportunity to embrace Catholic teaching and save these lives. Doing so would coincide with the first month of the Jubilee, marking the final period of his presidency.
