‘Every execution should be stopped’: How U.S. bishops work to save prisoners on death row

CNA Staff, Oct 25, 2025 / 06:00 am

Bishops in multiple U.S. states are leading efforts to spare the lives of condemned prisoners facing execution — urging clemency in line with the Catholic Church’s relatively recent but unambiguous declaration that the death penalty is not permissible and should be abolished.

Executions in the United States have been increasingly less common for years. Following the death penalty’s re-legalization by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, executions peaked in the country around the turn of the century before beginning a gradual decline.

Still, more than 1,600 prisoners have been executed since the late 1970s . The largest number of those executions has been carried out in Texas, which has killed 596 prisoners over that time period.

As with other states, th