VaticanNews portal reports (April 24, 2026) that the usurper Robert Prevost, calling himself “Pope Leo XIV,” issued a video message to an event at DePaul University in the United States marking the 15th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois. In this message, the antipope declared that “the dignity of the person is not lost even after very serious crimes are committed,” offered his “support to those who advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States of America and around the world,” and asserted that “the common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment.” He further cited the post-conciliar Catechism’s claim that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,” while simultaneously insisting on the protection of life “from conception until natural death.” This message is a textbook specimen of the conciliar revolution’s inversion of Catholic moral theology — replacing the divinely ordained authority of the state to punish criminals with a sentimentalist cult of autonomous “human dignity” that undermines the very foundations of justice, natural law, and the common good.
The Usurper Speaks: A Manifesto of Doctrinal Subversion
Let us examine the words of this man who illegitimately occupies the Vatican and claims the Chair of Peter. Robert Prevost, styling himself “Pope Leo XIV,” declared: “The dignity of the person is not lost even after very serious crimes are committed.” He further stated: “I pray that your efforts will lead to a greater acknowledgement of the dignity of every person, and will inspire others to work for the same just cause.” And again: “Effective systems of detention can be and have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption.”
These statements, dripping with the saccharine sentimentality characteristic of post-conciliar discourse, are not merely disciplinary preferences or prudential judgments. They constitute a direct assault on the constant teaching of the Catholic Magisterium, Sacred Scripture, the natural law, and the unanimous tradition of the Church regarding the legitimate authority of the civil power to inflict capital punishment. That a man claiming to be the Vicar of Christ should lend his voice to the abolition of the death penalty — a penalty sanctioned by God Himself in the Old Law and never abrogated in the New — reveals the depth of the apostasy that has consumed the structures occupying the Vatican.
The Teaching of the Catholic Church: The State’s Right and Duty to Punish with Death
The Catholic Church has always taught, with the full weight of her infallible Magisterium, that the civil authority possesses the legitimate right and, in certain cases, the duty to inflict capital punishment upon those who commit grave crimes against the common good. This teaching is not a matter of opinion, discipline, or “development of doctrine.” It is rooted in the very constitution of society as established by God.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent (the Roman Catechism), promulgated in 1566 under the authority of the Council of Trent and approved by Pope St. Pius V, teaches explicitly regarding the Fifth Commandment:
Another kind of lawful slaying belongs to the civil authorities, to whom is entrusted power of life and death, by the legal and judicious exercise of which they punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The just use of this power, far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder. The end of the Commandment is the preservation and security of human life. Now the punishments inflicted by the civil authority, which is the legitimate avenger of crime, naturally tend to this end, since they give security to life by repressing outrage and violence.
This is not an isolated statement. The constant tradition of the Church affirms that the civil power, as the minister of God (Romans 13:4), bears the sword not in vain and has the authority to take the life of a criminal for the protection of the common good. The natural law itself, accessible to reason without the aid of supernatural revelation, dictates that a member of the body politic who is incorrigibly dangerous to the community may be justly removed — even by death — for the preservation of the whole.
Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical Immortale Dei (1895), taught that the authority of the state comes from God and that those who govern are, in a sense, the vicegerents of the Divine Majesty. The state, therefore, does not possess arbitrary power but exercises a delegated authority that includes the power to punish — and this power, by its very nature, extends to the gravest penalties when the common good demands it.
Sacred Scripture: The Foundation of Capital Punishment
The antipope’s assertion that the death penalty is “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” stands in direct contradiction to the Word of God. Sacred Scripture, both in the Old and New Testaments, affirms the legitimacy of capital punishment with unmistakable clarity.
In Genesis 9:6, God Himself establishes the principle of capital punishment as a permanent covenant with humanity:
Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for God made man to his own image.
This is not a ceremonial precept of the Mosaic Law that passed away with the coming of Christ. It is a precept of the natural law, promulgated by God Himself before the giving of the Law to Moses, and binding upon all peoples for all time. The reason given — “for God made man to his own image” — is not abrogated by the New Covenant; it is, if anything, reinforced by the Incarnation of the Son of God, who took on that same human nature.
In the Old Law, God commanded the death penalty for numerous offenses — murder (Exodus 21:12-14), kidnapping (Exodus 21:16), striking or cursing one’s parents (Exodus 21:15, 17), adultery (Leviticus 20:10), blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16), and many others. If the death penalty were inherently an attack on human dignity, then God Himself would be guilty of violating the dignity of His own creatures — a blasphemous absurdity.
In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul, writing under divine inspiration, affirms the authority of the civil power to wield the sword:
For he is God’s minister to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, fear: for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God’s minister: an avenger, to execute wrath upon him that doth evil. (Romans 13:4)
The “sword” (gladius) is not a metaphor for imprisonment. It is the instrument of execution. The Apostle teaches that the civil magistrate is God’s minister, an avenger who executes wrath (iram) upon the evildoer. This is divine revelation, not human opinion. The antipope’s attempt to reinterpret or nullify this teaching is an act of rebellion against the inspired Word of God.
Even Our Lord Jesus Christ, before Pontius Pilate, acknowledged the legitimacy of the power of the Roman state. When Pilate said, “Thou wilt not speak to me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee?” (John 19:10), Christ did not rebuke Pilate for claiming the authority to execute. Rather, He said:
“Thou shouldest not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above” (John 19:11).
Christ Himself acknowledged that the power to execute — even when unjustly exercised against the Innocent One — is a power “given from above.” The authority to inflict death for crime is therefore a divine delegation to the civil power, not a violation of human dignity.
The Post-Conciliar Inversion: From Justice to Sentimentality
The antipope cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992, revised 2018), which states that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” (CCC 2267, as revised by Francis in 2018). This revision represents a radical break with the constant teaching of the Catholic Church and was condemned by numerous Catholic theologians and bishops prior to the conciliar revolution as incompatible with the deposit of faith.
The 1992 edition of the Catechism had stated that the traditional teaching “does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” The 2018 revision, imposed by the apostate Jorge Bergoglio, went further, declaring the death penalty “inadmissible” in all cases and calling it “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” This was not a legitimate development of doctrine but a corruption — a direct contradiction of Sacred Scripture, the Fathers, and the constant Magisterium.
Pope St. Pius X, in his encyclical Lamentabili sane exitu (1907), condemned the modernist proposition that “the progress of sciences requires a reform of the concept of Christian doctrine concerning God, creation, Revelation, the Person of the Incarnate Word, and Redemption” (Proposition 64). The post-conciliar revision of the Church’s teaching on capital punishment is precisely such a “reform” — driven not by deeper understanding of revealed truth, but by the spirit of the age, the cult of man, and the modernist heresy that truth evolves with human progress.
The antipope’s appeal to “redemption” as a reason to abolish the death penalty is particularly revealing. He stated: “Effective systems of detention can be and have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption.” This argument, while sounding merciful, inverts the proper order of justice and mercy. The Catholic Church has always taught that the primary end of punishment is not the reformation of the criminal (though that may be a secondary benefit) but the restoration of the order of justice violated by the crime. As Pope Pius XII taught in an address to the Italian Association of Catholic Jurists (December 5, 1954):
The public power may deprive the condemned person of the enjoyment of life in expiation of his fault when, by his crime, he has already disposed himself of his right to live.
The right to life is not an absolute, inviolable possession independent of one’s moral condition. It is a gift from God, conditional upon the observance of His law. When a person commits a grave crime against the common good, he forfeits, in varying degrees, his right to the full enjoyment of that gift. The state, as the minister of God, may justly deprive him of life. To deny this is to deny the very foundation of justice.
The Cult of “Human Dignity” as a Modernist Idol
The antipope’s repeated invocation of “human dignity” as the supreme principle overriding the demands of justice is a hallmark of the modernist revolution. The phrase “human dignity,” as used in post-conciliar discourse, has been stripped of its proper Catholic meaning — which is rooted in man’s creation in the image of God and his supernatural destiny — and replaced with a naturalistic, anthropocentric concept that makes man the measure of all things.
Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “human reason, without any reference whatsoever to God, is the sole arbiter of truth and falsehood, and of good and evil; it is law to itself” (Proposition 3). The post-conciliar cult of “human dignity” is precisely this: the elevation of human sentiment and autonomy above the law of God, the authority of Scripture, and the teaching of the Church.
The antipope’s message is saturated with this naturalistic humanism. He speaks of “acknowledgement of the dignity of every person,” “the possibility of redemption,” and “safeguarding the sanctity of human life” — all in a context that systematically excludes any reference to the supernatural order, the eternal destiny of the soul, the reality of sin, the necessity of expiation, or the authority of God’s law. This is not Catholic teaching. This is the religion of man, the cult of humanity that Pope St. Pius X identified as the very essence of Modernism.
The Hypocrisy of “From Conception to Natural Death”
Perhaps the most grotesque feature of the antipope’s message is his simultaneous insistence on the protection of life “from conception until natural death” and his advocacy for the abolition of the death penalty. This pairing is not merely ironic — it is a deliberate deception designed to coat the poison of abolitionism in the language of the “culture of life.”
The structures occupying the Vatican have, for decades, systematically undermined the protection of life in its earliest stages through their promotion of religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), their silence on abortion legislation, their embrace of the United Nations’ population control agenda, and their refusal to deny Holy Communion to politicians who legislate in favor of the slaughter of the unborn. The antipope speaks of “safeguarding the sanctity of human life” while the conciliar sect continues to operate within a framework that has facilitated the legalized murder of tens of millions of unborn children worldwide.
This is the hallmark of the neo-church: it speaks of “life” while promoting death; it speaks of “dignity” while trampling on the dignity of the unborn, the innocent, and the just; it speaks of “justice” while denying the state’s God-given authority to punish the wicked. As Pope Pius IX declared in the Syllabus of Errors, the proposition that “the teaching of the Catholic Church is hostile to the well-being and interests of society” (Proposition 40) is condemned — yet the conciliar sect’s abandonment of the Church’s teaching on capital punishment is precisely such a concession to the spirit of the age, a surrender to the liberal, secularist agenda that seeks to dismantle every vestige of Christian civilization.
The Symptomatic Silence: What the Usurper Does Not Say
The linguistic and rhetorical choices of the antipope’s message are as revealing as its content. The tone is bureaucratic, sentimental, and devoid of any supernatural fervor. There is no mention of God’s justice, no reference to the eternal consequences of sin, no call to repentance, no invocation of the authority of Sacred Scripture or the Magisterium. The word “God” appears only in the citation of the Catechism — and even there, it is the Catechism of the conciliar sect, not the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The antipope speaks of “your efforts” and “the same just cause” — language borrowed from the lexicon of secular activism and social justice movements. This is not the language of the Vicar of Christ. This is the language of a bureaucrat, a diplomat, a man of the world who has absorbed the values of the Enlightenment and the Revolution and dresses them in ecclesiastical vestments.
There is no mention of the Fifth Commandment as understood by the Church. There is no reference to the teaching of the Roman Catechism, of St. Thomas Aquinas, of St. Robert Bellarmine, or of any of the great Doctors of the Church who affirmed the legitimacy of capital punishment. There is no acknowledgment that the Church’s traditional teaching on this matter has been constant, universal, and rooted in divine revelation. The antipope simply presents the post-conciliar revision as though it were the Church’s teaching — as though sixteen centuries of Catholic doctrine had never existed.
The Roots of the Error: Vatican II and the Hermeneutic of Continuity as Camouflage
The antipope’s position on the death penalty is not an isolated error. It is the logical and necessary fruit of the conciliar revolution that began with John XXIII’s opening of the windows to the world in 1962. The documents of Vatican II — particularly Gaudium et Spes and Dignitatis Humanae — introduced a new anthropology, a new ecclesiology, and a new relationship between the Church and the world that are fundamentally incompatible with the integral Catholic faith.
Gaudium et Spes (the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”) inaugurated the Church’s capitulation to the spirit of the age by declaring that the Church must “join forces with all people of good will” to address the problems of the world — as though the Church’s mission were primarily social and temporal rather than supernatural and eternal. This document laid the groundwork for the post-conciliar obsession with “human rights,” “dialogue,” and “the dignity of the human person” — concepts that, in their post-conciliar usage, are emptied of their Catholic content and filled with the spirit of liberalism and naturalism.
The antipope’s message on the death penalty is a direct product of this conciliar revolution. It applies the post-conciliar anthropology — which places the autonomous, self-determining individual at the center of moral reflection — to the question of criminal justice, and arrives at the predictable conclusion that the state must not take the life of any person, regardless of the gravity of their crimes. This is not Catholic moral theology. This is Kantian liberalism dressed in ecclesiastical language.
The Duty of the Catholic Faithful: Rejection of the Usurper and Return to Tradition
The faithful who profess the integral Catholic faith must reject the antipope’s message in its entirety. It is not a legitimate exercise of the papal magisterium. It is not a prudential disciplinary judgment. It is an error — a serious error that contradicts Sacred Scripture, the natural law, the constant teaching of the Church, and the unanimous tradition of the Fathers and Doctors.
The Catholic Church teaches that the civil authority has the right and, in certain cases, the duty to inflict capital punishment for the protection of the common good. This teaching is not a relic of a bygone era. It is not a “development” that can be reversed by the changing sentiments of the age. It is rooted in the eternal law of God, revealed in Sacred Scripture, taught by the Magisterium, and confirmed by the natural reason of mankind.
Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas (1925), taught that the reign of Christ the King extends over all nations and all aspects of human life — including the administration of justice. He wrote:
His reign, namely, extends not only to Catholic nations or to those who, by receiving baptism according to law, belong to the Church, even though their erroneous opinions have led them astray or discord has separated them from love, but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.
The antipope’s rejection of capital punishment is a rejection of Christ the King’s authority over the civil order. It is a declaration that the sentiment of modern man takes precedence over the law of God. It is, in the words of Pope St. Pius X, “the synthesis of all heresies” — Modernism — applied to the question of justice and punishment.
The faithful must hold fast to the immutable teaching of the Catholic Church. They must reject the usurper in the Vatican and his conciar sect. They must profess, without compromise, that the death penalty is a legitimate exercise of the civil authority’s God-given power; that justice demands, in certain cases, the forfeiture of the criminal’s life; and that the “human dignity” invoked by the antipope is a counterfeit idol that cannot substitute for the justice of God.
Fides sancta Catholica — the holy Catholic faith — does not bend to the spirit of the age. It endures forever.
Source:
Pope: Human dignity is not lost even after serious crimes are committed (vaticannews.va)
Date: 24.04.2026