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CV NEWS FEED // Pope Francis prayed Sunday that President Joe Biden will commute or change all federal death penalty sentences before leaving office in January 2025.
Vatican News reported that the Pope offered his prayer during his Angelus address, asking listeners to join him in praying for the death row inmates.
“Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death,” he said.
CatholicVote previously reported that Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group that advocates for the abolition of the death penalty in the U.S., has also called for Biden to commute the federal death penalty sentences.
Catholic Mobilizing Network cited Pope Francis’ Bull of Indiction of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope, in which the Pope called for “the abolition of the death penalty, a provision at odds with Christian faith and one that eliminates all hope of forgiveness and rehabilitation.”
Should Biden heed the calls for pardon and decide to commute the federal death penalty sentences, the action would only affect a small portion of death row inmates across the U.S. Only 40 men are currently on federal death row, compared to the 2,213 death-row sentences in individual states known to the Legal Defense Fund as of July 1.
According to the same data, more than a quarter (632) of death-row inmates are in California, compared with 288 in Florida, 180 in Texas, 167 in Alabama, and 138 in North Carolina. However, California stopped executing prisoners in 2006.
Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a moratorium on the death penalty and dismantled the execution chamber in 2019, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Prisoners in California are still sentenced to the death penalty, but they are moved to other prisons to undergo rehabilitation and begin working prison jobs, contributing 70% of their earnings to the families of their victims.
