“When I met Pope Leo I shared with him a drawing of Christ and Calvary that was sketched by a man who is one of the 114 who are sitting on death row right now in Ohio,” Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, the executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, told me in an exclusive interview two days after she met the first American pope at the end of the June 17 public audience in St. Peter’s Square.

The day before Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy met Pope Leo XIV, the governor of Ohio, a longtime proponent of the death penalty, had come out against the practice. 

“I shared with him the names of all of the men who currently have execution dates scheduled for after Gov. Mike DeWine leaves office next January,” she said.

On June 16, the Republican governor who co-wrote the bill to reinstate Ohio’s death penalty more than 45 years ago called for the state to abolish capital punishment, saying it did not improve public safety and could no longer be morally justified. “I no longer believe the death penalty is a deterrent to murder…. The moral justification I had for voting for the death penalty simply no longer exists,” he said.

“Governor DeWine is a faithful, serious Catholic man and has eight children. He’s been in office for two terms as governor and has used his authority to postpone dozens of executions in his state. He has been very public about his pro-life stance,” Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy noted.

Nevertheless, she said, “the legislature in Ohio has been ineffective in passing any of the anti-death penalty bills before them. They’ve been ineffective at actually getting those across the finish line.” On the other hand, “the Catholic bishops of Ohio have been consistently working on this issue. There’s been murder-victim family members and exonerees and advocates involved in these campaigns to end the death penalty in the state. Indeed, this has been quite an effort stateside.”

“For this reason,” she said, “I decided to come to Rome to meet Pope Leo and have conversations with his collaborators in the Vatican, and it happened that while I was here, Governor DeWine decided to offer his press conference about his changed position on the death penalty.”

“At this juncture, Governor DeWine needs to take the next step. He has the opportunity, as an exiting governor, to commute death sentences before he departs office in early 2027, but he has not done so yet,” she said. She is concerned that if he does not commute their sentences, the executions of the 28 who have exhausted their appeals could be imminent if the next governor decides to restart executions in that state.

Referring to her meeting with Pope Leo, she said: “He said, ‘Thank you for your work on the death penalty’ and said ‘it is quite important.’ He seemed to track very closely with what I was saying about the death penalty. He seemed to know exactly what I was talking about.” 

She thanked him for the recent video about death penalty abolition that he shared in honor of the 15th anniversary of its abolition in his home state of Illinois. “It’s exciting to see an American pope lift up this action and anniversary,” she said.

Catholic Mobilizing Network

Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy has been in this work for almost 10 years as executive director of Catholic Mobilizing Network, a national Catholic organization founded in 2009 that works to end the death penalty and promote restorative justice.

Her desire to work for the abolition of the death penalty was sparked in 1995 when she saw the movie “Dead Man Walking,” she said. “I was so absolutely moved by Sister Helen Prejean’s conviction and moved also by the humanity of people she encountered on death row, by their struggles and by their family members and all those who were impacted by the death penalty. I became completely convinced about the value of human life from that film, and I knew that if I ever had the opportunity to work on the death penalty, I would.” 

Her commitment became even more strongly rooted when she watched Pope Francis powerfully advocate for the global abolition of the death penalty in his address to the U.S. Congress in 2015. Two years later, “after a long career of working on human rights, global poverty, hunger and development issues for many years,” she became director of Catholic Mobilizing Network. She said that while this issue “is still controversial,” she believes “that it’s possible to end the death penalty in our lifetime.”

She is leading the organization with the understanding that the Catholic Church teaches that “the death penalty is inadmissible, that means no exclusions, no exceptions.” In her role as executive director, she came to Rome “to be a conduit between the Vatican and the U.S. church’s role in seeking an end to the death penalty in the United States.”

Uneven progress

Commenting on the overall situation in the United States, she expressed concern that “we’re living in a time of revenge rhetoric, and that is seeping into every facet of society.” She added that “at the highest levels of the U.S. government there are campaigns of exclusion and detention writ large.” Moreover, “the death penalty is often brought up, erroneously, I might add, as a solution to society’s ills or somehow a deterrent to crime or a tool of justice.”

She believes, however, that the death penalty is “falling out of favor” among the American public as evidenced by the fact that 23 states have abolished it. Although 27 states still have the death penalty on the books, she said only 10 or 11 of these are issuing death warrants and actively executing. Her organization is paying particular attention to Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona and Alabama.

She drew attention to the fact that “the most active executing state currently is Florida,” which executed 19 people last year. “In my view, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who happens to be a Catholic governor, seems to be using the opportunity of this sort of revenge rhetoric and this climate of fear in the United States to pursue executions in his state,” she said. “He’s issuing death warrants about every two weeks.”

Today, California has the greatest number of people on death row, including some women. She noted that Gov. Gavin Newsom dismantled California’s death chamber early in his tenure, but “he hasn’t done that much more to move forward with abolition in that state” since that time.

I asked how she understands the fact that Catholics in positions of responsibility, like governors, many members of Congress and members of the administration, still support it.

Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy replied: “I guess it boils down to a question of who people are listening to, and where their values are. Certainly, the death penalty is inadmissible [in Catholic teaching], but we see a number of politicians being influenced by these messages of fear or exclusion that are so rampant right now.” Moreover, she said, “there’s nothing quite like the death penalty that scores political points if you’re looking to be seen as tough on crime, and that is the currency of the day in the United States right now.”

“At the same time,” she said, “there are positive things happening as well, such as the recent position taken by the governor of Ohio.” Moreover, she said, “Pope Leo’s video regarding the death penalty was incredibly encouraging because right now in the United States there are so many challenges to democracy, so many social needs and social ministries for the church, in particular with migrants and detentions…. It was a shot in the arm, a boost for the work that needs to continue.”

Indeed, she said, “We are so deeply grateful to know that such a moral leader, such a world leader, is reiterating, for the world to hear, that the church is not stepping back from this pro-life position and is encouraging this witness for life around the abolition of the death penalty.”

Mercy vs. vengeance

When I recalled that before he left office, President Joe Biden commuted the death sentence of people condemned at the federal level, Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy said that her organization had asked for the commutation of the sentences of 40 men on death row at the federal level, and Mr. Biden commuted all but three of them. 

“If President Biden hadn’t taken the historic action to commute 37 death sentences, it’s undeniable that we would be facing a rapid succession of executions at the federal level right now under the Trump administration,” she said. The three who remain on death row were convicted of hate crimes, but because they are in the early stages of their appeal process, “God willing, there’s quite some time before they would be eligible for execution. Indeed, it’s quite unlikely that we’ll see an execution at the federal level under the Trump administration for these three.”

Under the Trump administration, she said, “the rhetoric of vengeance that we hear is definitely infiltrating state politics, and I think that’s why we see an uptick in executions. We also see new methods of execution being introduced, like nitrogen gas or firing squad—they executed one by firing squad in South Carolina. 

“Moreover, the rhetoric of revenge has ripple effects; even though the Trump administration is not executing individuals at the federal level, what they are trying to do is expand what crimes are eligible to receive death sentences,” she said. But, she predicted, “some of these orders for expansions or other regressions will be litigated in court.” 

Before returning to Washington, D.C., last Saturday, June 20, Ms. Vaillantcourt Murphy told me she was greatly encouraged: “I leave Rome emboldened that we are mobilizing for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States with the blessing of the Holy Father and the encouragement of the Vatican.”

Gerard O’Connell is America’s senior Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History. He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.