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Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announcement of the execution by firing squad of Fort Hood gunman Nidal Malik Hasan continues to fuel controversy. Former US Army Major Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people and wounding another 32, is expected to be put to death in a live-streamed execution, most likely on 3 December.
Pope Leo XIV has also intervened in the debate, without commenting directly on the case. Marking the World Day Against the Death Penalty on 10 October, he declared on Saturday that capital punishment is “inadmissible”.
In a post on X, the US-born Pope cited the revised Catholic teaching on capital punishment introduced by Pope Francis, according to which the death penalty attacks the inherent dignity of a human being.
“The common good can be safeguarded and the demands of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment,” reads the post published on Leo’s account, @Pontifex. “Effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens and at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption.” The post ends with the hashtag #nopenadimorte.
The Pope did not refer to either the planned execution or the botched lethal injection in Tennessee that recently reignited the debate over the death penalty in the United States. However, his post came just hours after his top deputy, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state, had explicitly stated that the planned public execution in the United States was “unacceptable” and that it was “unacceptable to turn death into a spectacle”.
In 2018, Pope Francis amended official Catholic teaching to declare the death penalty “inadmissible” in all circumstances.
Previously, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the official compendium of Church teaching, stated that it did not rule out recourse to capital punishment “if this were the only possible way to defend effectively human lives against an unjust aggressor”.
The head of the US bishops’ conference, Archbishop Paul Coakley, expressed “shock” and “great sorrow” at the Pentagon’s plans. “In no way can Hasan’s actions be condoned, but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,” he said in a statement on Friday. “The public execution even of those who have done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and represent a stain on the conscience of its people,” he added.
Vance will not watch the execution if it is broadcast
Although he has not opposed Hasan’s execution, US Vice-President JD Vance has said he will not watch the live broadcast and has even questioned whether the Pentagon’s plan for a public execution will actually go ahead.
According to Vance, the planned method of execution is distracting attention from the seriousness of Hasan’s crimes. “This is a man who carried out, in my view, the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 11 September,” the US vice-president said, adding: “The people he was supposed to care for, the Army soldiers he was meant to treat for mental illness and other problems, he struck at their moment of maximum vulnerability and mowed these people down right where they lived.”
“Whatever controversy there is over the method of execution, I hope people do not forget that this is a man who brutally murdered many innocent people,” he continued.
President Trump is a staunch supporter of the death penalty. In the first nine months of 2026, 30 executions have been carried out in the United States. The Pentagon said on Monday that the president had approved the execution of Major Hasan.