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In this Aug. 16, 2010 file photo, Billy Ray Irick, on death row for raping and killing a 7-year-old girl in 1985, appears in a Knox County criminal courtroom in Knoxville, Tenn. (Michael Patrick/The Knoxville News Sentinel via AP, File)
Politics & SocietyNews
Jonathan Mattise - Associated Press
The execution would occur a week after Pope Francis revealed new church teaching that deems the death penalty “inadmissible” under all circumstances.
Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille, and an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, is pictured in a 2010 photo in Geneva. (CNS photo/Salvatore Di Nolfi, EPA)
FaithDispatches
Kevin Clarke
“The huge thing,” she said, is the recognition by the church of “the inviolable dignity even of guilty people who have done terrible crimes.”
Politics & SocietyNews
Cindy Wooden - Catholic News Service
Pope Francis' revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to assert that capital punishment is morally inadmissible shows how the church can grow in its understanding of the implications of basic tenets of faith.
Father Chris Ponnet, chaplain at the St. Camillus Center for Spiritual Care in Los Angeles, speaks during a rally protesting the death penalty in Anaheim, Calif., Feb. 25, 2017. (CNS photo/Andrew Cullen, Reuters) 
FaithDispatches
Michael J. O’Loughlin
Pope Francis has revised the church’s catechism to state that the death penalty is no longer admissible.
FaithVideo
America Staff
Sister Helen Prejean, an anti-death penalty activist and author of the book Dead Man Walking, joins Kevin Clarke to discuss Pope Francis' revision of the death penalty teaching.
 Pope Francis speaks during his general audience in Paul VI hall at the Vatican Aug. 1. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
FaithVatican Dispatch
Gerard O’Connell
The revised teaching declares that the death penalty is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person, and that the church works "for its abolition worldwide."