The Death Penalty and the Pope

The importance many people place on having a death penalty in the U.S. has always been lost on me. If someone had murdered my children, would I want them to face the quick relief of death, or the depressing agony of life in prison. To me the answer is clear.

Conversely, it's been pretty well established that the death penalty is applied pretty arbitrarily - not necessarily to the worst offenders, and sometimes to innocent people. To cap it all off, it costs the state a lot more to execute someone that it does to imprison them for life.

Last but not least - do we really want to give the state the power to kill people?

As you've surmised, I'm against the death penalty. But I didn't realize till today that the Catholic church's opposition to the death penalty was put in place only in 1999 by Pope John Paul II. In starting to like him more and more. Posthumously of course.