Florida: Bishops Plead with DeSantis to Halt Double Execution on July 28

Two death row inmates are to be executed on the same day in Florida prisons. The state's bishops have appealed to the governor in the name of the doctrine reaffirmed by Francis in 2018.

The Fact

Vatican News reports on July 24, 2026, that the Catholic bishops of Florida have approached Governor Ron DeSantis to ask him to suspend two capital executions scheduled for the same day, July 28. In a letter signed by the executive director of the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops, the prelates acknowledge the gravity of the crimes committed while emphasizing that it is possible "to do justice and exercise mercy at the same time." They invoke the inviolable dignity of the human person and the availability, in modern American prisons, of prison systems capable of permanently neutralizing the dangerousness of convicts without resorting to their execution.

Our Analysis

The gesture is in line with contemporary magisterium. Since the revision of the Catechism carried out by Pope Francis on August 2, 2018, paragraph 2267 states that "the death penalty is inadmissible because it attacks the inviolability and dignity of the person." Fratelli tutti deepens this reasoning in paragraphs 263 to 269, calling for universal abolition and explicitly engaging the Church to work determinedly for the substitution of the death penalty everywhere in the world. Florida is among the American states that execute the most regularly. The episcopal initiative therefore has doctrinal as well as political value: it questions a governor who publicly claims his Christian roots on the articulation between his faith and the exercise of the right of grace that the state law recognizes in him.

To Reflect On

Pray for the two condemned, for their victims, for those who bear the decision to execute or pardon. Remember that human dignity is not suspended by fault, and that no Christian conscience engaged in public service can dispense with protecting it to the end.