section_path: Papacy (2013–2025)/Death penalty
section_name: Death penalty
paragraph_text: Death penalty
  
  Francis committed the Catholic Church to support worldwide abolition of the death penalty. In 2018, Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church to read that "in the light of the Gospel " the death penalty is "inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person " and that the Catholic Church "works with determination for its abolition worldwide". In his 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, Francis repeated that the death penalty was "inadmissible", and that "there can be no stepping back from this position."
  
  On 9 January 2022, Francis stated in his annual speech to Vatican ambassadors: "The death penalty cannot be employed for a purported state justice, since it does not constitute a deterrent nor render justice to victims, but only fuels the thirst for vengeance."