Pilgrims of Hope, Episode 4: Working to Abolish the Death Penalty

Conversations about Finding and Sharing Hope: A video series for the Jubilee Year 2025

Hosted by Fr. Ron Will
Welcome to this fourth episode in a series titled, “Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope.” We will post a new video in this series throughout the jubilee year on the last Tuesday of the month.

As we record this session. Pope Francis died just two days ago, and the Catholic community grieves his death. Pope Francis leaves us a legacy of many impactful statements and actions. One of those impacts is his declaring the year 2025 as a jubilee year with the theme, the Year of Hope. The Catholic Church celebrates jubilee years every 25 years. The foundation for these special jubilee years is found in the book of the prophet Isaiah Chapter 61, where it says, “

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me;

He has sent me to bring good news to the afflicted,

to bind up the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives,

release to the prisoners,

To announce a year of favor from the Lod

and a day of vindication by our God.”

One of the groups explicitly mentioned in that passage is the imprisoned. Among the imprisoned, one group that especially needs our mercy and hope are those on death row awaiting execution.

For this group, too, Pope Francis had a special message.

In 2018, Pope Francis approved after years of study edits to the Catechism of the Catholic Church that would call for the abolition of the death penalty. That’s in paragraph 2267:

The Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

Fr. Mark Miller, a Precious Blood priest, has been working for years to abolish the death penalty. In today’s episode, he discusses the basis for the church’s teaching, recalls his years of activism on this issue and describes his attempts to lobby legislators on this critical issue.

All of the videos in this series can be found here: Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope

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[Fr. Ron Will, a Precious Blood priest and spiritual director, is a graduate of Catholic Theological Union and Creighton University’s School of Christian Spirituality. He has a special interest in helping form intentional disciples of Jesus, encouraging others to go spiritually deep-sea diving to explore a deeper relationship with God, and walking with people as they dive into the ocean of God’s mystery actually experiencing God rather than simply dipping one’s toe into the water.]

Photo Credit: ID 225447647 © Aliaksandr Mazurkevich | Dreamstime.com

Music Credit: “We Are Marching” (Siyahamba). Performed by First Christian Church of Tacoma. Text: South African. Tune: South African. © 1984, Utryck, Walton Music Corporation, agent. Used with permission under onelicense.net, #A-725830

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