Pope Leo XIV has declared the death penalty "unacceptable," as his native United States announced plans to livestream a firing-squad execution.
Marking the World Day Against the Death Penalty on Saturday, Pope Leo XIV reaffirmed the Catholic Church's teaching on capital punishment, writing on X that the death penalty is "unacceptable because it is an offense against the inviolability and dignity of the human person."
"The common good can be protected and the demands of justice can be met without resorting to the death penalty," his post said.
"Effective systems of detention have been developed to protect citizens, without entirely depriving those who have committed crimes of the possibility of redemption," the head of the Catholic Church added.
The American pontiff's comments came days after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad on December 3 will be livestreamed.
Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in a 2009 shooting rampage at the Fort Hood military base.
Pope Leo XIV did not refer specifically to the planned execution, nor did he mention last month's botched execution of Christa Pike, who survived two doses of lethal injection in Tennessee.
His post, however, appeared hours after his top deputy, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, told Vatican News that the plan to livestream Hasan's execution was "unacceptable."
Leo XIV's predecessor, Pope Francis, was the first to revise the Catholic Church's official teaching in 2018 to declare the death penalty "unacceptable" in all cases.
Previously, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official compendium of Church teaching, said the Church did not exclude recourse to the death penalty "if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor."
The plan to livestream Hasan's execution has sparked outrage across America's political divides. Republican Representative Austin Scott said he supports executing Hasan but that "livestreaming executions is what Jihadists do. America is better than that."
Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Hasan should "face justice," but that public executions are "the kind of thing Iran and the Taliban do. Is this what we want to be associated with?"
On Thursday, a Pentagon official confirmed the plan, but by Friday, Vice President JD Vance, a practicing Catholic, expressed doubt about whether the livestream would go ahead, telling reporters that if it did, "I won't watch it."
