On Aug. 2, Pope Francis formally declared the Catholic Church opposed to the death penalty for criminals convicted of murder and other serious crimes.
During their pontificates, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI both advocated the abolition of capital punishment.
Last week, Pope Francis made abolition a new Catholic doctrine by adding it to the catechism. The teaching of the church is now, “in the light of the Gospel, the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
Previously the doctrine was that cases in which execution is morally justified are “very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”
Pope Francis hinted at the change in an Oct. 11 speech to a Vatican council on new evangelism when he said the death penalty should have a “more adequate and coherent space” in the catechism.
The Pope is credible on this subject because his priestly ministry in Argentina for years included regular prison visits, and he spent many hours with condemned men.
He learned that there is always the possibility of repentance and redemption.
In the winter of 1973, Canada was in the early months of a three-year debate on the future of the death penalty. The Trudeau government had extended a 1968 law establishing a five-year moratorium on hangings and a bill abolishing capital punishment was drafted.
The capital punishment debate was fertile soil for crime journalism.
I spent many days in western Canadian prisons interviewing men on death row.
One afternoon on a cold, snowy weekend I found myself sitting outside the cell of Clifford Lurvey, listening to his laboured breathing as he slept.
He had been sentenced to hang for the drunken shooting of Const. Len Shakespeare, a St. Boniface, Man. police officer and his sentence was delayed because of the moratorium.
On Friday, July 18, 1969, Shakespeare and three other policemen responded to a burglar alarm at the Loco-Mart grocery store where four armed robbers had confronted the store manager after closing time and looted the store safe of $4,000.
When the police in two cars arrived at the store parking lot, three of the four bandits fled.
Only Lurvey stayed and engaged in a firefight with Shakespeare. The policeman got off two shots before he was downed by a bullet that struck his shoulder.
When Shakespeare was on the ground, Lurvey stood over him and fired twice more, killing him.
When he awakened, he told me the story and gave two reasons for killing Const. Shakespeare.
He was very drunk at the time, and very stupid.
On March 14, 1970, Lurvey was sentenced to hang and imprisoned in Stony Mountain Penitentiary in Manitoba.
His respiratory system failed and in 1978, two years after the free vote in Parliament abolished capital punishment, he died in hospital in Winnipeg.
Frank Dabbs is a veteran political and business journalist and author.
