WASHINGTON (OSV News) — As President Donald Trump directed top prosecutors to increase the number of death penalty cases sought in the nation’s capital by bringing federal charges, Catholic opponents of capital punishment said the practice causes more harm than justice.
The Sept. 25 memo from Trump, addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, told them to seek “the death penalty in all appropriate cases where, following full examination of the evidence and other relevant information, the applicable factors justify a sentence of death.”
Trump told them to “pursue Federal jurisdiction with respect to cases involving crimes committed in the District of Columbia for which the death penalty is available under Federal law.”
Panel: Capital punishment violates human dignity
At a Sept. 26 panel discussion co-hosted by Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group that advocates for the abolition of the death penalty in line with Catholic teaching, and Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, at the 2025 National Catholic Conference on Restorative Justice in Atlanta, panelists said the practice violates human dignity.
Elizabeth Bruenig, a staff writer at The Atlantic and a former opinion columnist for The New York Times and The Washington Post, and who has extensively covered capital punishment, said during the panel that there are a number of problems with the practice, including the “arbitrary” way it is applied.
“Whether you receive capital punishment depends a great deal on what district you happen to commit your offense in, not necessarily the heinousness of the offense,” she said.
“We know that capital punishment is racist in effect,” she continued, “in that you see more Black people on death row than are reflected in the population in general; it’s quite disproportionate, that representation. We know for a fact that juries are more likely to give Black offenders with white victims the death penalty than any other combination of racial factors.”
Executive order, other actions in Washington
Previously, at a Cabinet meeting in August, Trump revealed that he wanted capital punishment sought for all murders in Washington.
“Anybody murders something in the capital: capital punishment,” Trump said Aug. 26. “Capital: capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we’re going to be seeking the death penalty.”
Trump’s comments came amid his federalization of the police force in the nation’s capital and after he activated the National Guard in what he called an effort to combat crime in Washington.
Among the first actions of his second term earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. attorney general to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” and to “seek the death penalty regardless of other factors for every federal capital crime” that involves the “murder of a law-enforcement officer” or a “capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country.”
Church’s position on capital punishment
The Catholic Church’s official magisterium opposes the use of capital punishment as inconsistent with the inherent sanctity of human life, and advocates for the practice’s abolition worldwide.
The late Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 to clarify the church’s teaching that capital punishment is morally “inadmissible” in the modern world and that the church works with determination for its abolishment worldwide.
In his 2020 encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis addressed the moral problem of capital punishment by citing St. John Paul II, writing that his predecessor “stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice.”
About a decade prior to becoming Pope Leo XIV earlier this year, then-Bishop Robert Prevost also raised his voice in support of abolishing capital punishment, writing in a March 5, 2015, post on X, then known as Twitter, “It’s time to end the death penalty.”
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
