The death penalty is now no longer admissible under any circumstances after a change to the Catechism of the Catholic Church was decided by Pope Francis.

“The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” reads the Catechism of the Catholic Church now, with the addition that the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

This is a departure from what the document, approved under Pope John Paul II in 1992, says on the matter: “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”

As it’s been re-written, the Catechism now says that “more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.”

It’s for this reason, and “in light of the Gospel,” that the Church teaches, according to Pope Francis, that the practice is now inadmissible.