The Death Penalty Is Pro-Life: Three Responses to Pope Leo XIV’s Unbiblical View

Few modern films have probed the moral tensions of capital punishment as unflinchingly as Dead Man Walking (1995). The adaptation of Sister Helen Prejean’s book recounting her time as a spiritual advisor on death row takes us into the cell of a condemned man, building sympathy for him and portraying victims’ families as dehumanizing avengers.^[1] The film is a powerful critique of the morality of capital punishment, as well as a testimony to the power of film. In the three decades since the film’s release, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) has been revised from originally affirming the state’s right to carry out capital punishment in 1992/1994,^[2] to deeming it unnecessary in 1997,^[3] to regarding it as inadmissible in 2018.^[4]

And what news from Rome? In words reminiscent of Prejean,^[5] Pope Leo XIV recently issued a charge indicting those who oppose abortion and also support capital punishment saying, “Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion’ but says, ‘I’m in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life.”^[6] This claim is not novel, but it reinforces the revised Catholic Catechism and is very much in line with what Prejean and others who oppose the death penalty have been saying for decades.^[7]

As Christians committed to upholding a biblical worldview in every sphere of life, we are duty-bound to respond to such claims with a clear apologia—a defense of God’s word on the subject. With the conviction that murder is “the greatest crime man can perpetrate against his fellow,”^[8] this essay offers three apologetic responses to Pope Leo XIV’s unbiblical opposition to the death penalty. To be pro-life is to be pro-death penalty.

Response #1: The Death Penalty is Pro-Life

Capital punishment was not invented by humans out of vengefulness or a disregard for human dignity; it comes from divine revelation. After Noah’s flood, God reveals the penalty for the unjust taking of human life: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen. 9:6). Notably, this command for capital punishment is sandwiched between commands to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 9:1, 7). When we consider its placement within the Noahic covenant, we see the divine penalty for murder is given in the context of God’s command to produce offspring. Therefore, right alongside God’s command to procreate is the penalty for destroying the human beings that are commanded to increase in number.^[9] Therefore, the death penalty is inextricably connected to the preciousness of human life, making the issues of the sanctity of life and capital punishment intertwined and thus inseparable. For this reason, we dare not set them at odds. Taken in its context, the death penalty for murder is rightly understood as pro-life.

The death penalty for murder is revealed by God again in Exodus (Exod. 21:12), Leviticus (Lev. 24:17), and Numbers (Num. 35:30–31). Following the Old Testament commands, we find neither abrogation nor alteration of this command in the New Testament (Rom. 13:1–5; Acts 25:11).^[10] Contrary to the Catholic notion of developing doctrine, Cornelius Van Til reminds us, “This is a sacred law for all time since it is based upon the foundation that man is made in God’s image.”^[11]

In the New Testament, Paul, “an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father” (Gal. 1:1) confirms the state’s right to execute criminals, or “bear the sword” (Rom. 13:1–5). The great theologian John Calvin affirms the right of the state to carry out God’s command, saying, “God so threatens and denounces vengeance against the murderer, that he even arms the magistrate with the sword for the avenging of slaughter, in order that the blood of men may not be shed with impunity.”^[12] Accordingly, when the state carries out the death penalty justly, it rightly uses the “sword” God placed in its hand.^[13]

Murder is a crime because human life is sacred, and God has given the state authority to carry out His prescribed punishment. By holding firmly to the Bible as the ultimate authority on the death penalty for murder, we are guarded from the contradictions of developing doctrine and protected from the fearful error of contending with God.^[14]

Response #2: Innocent Life and Guilty Life are Not the Same

Pope Leo’s statement suggests Christians who uphold the sanctity of preborn life and the justice of capital punishment hold a contradictory life ethic. Notably, in a 1997 letter from Prejean to John Paul II, she implies the same contradiction, criticizing supporters saying, “‘prolife’ as it turns out, most often means pro innocent life, not guilty life.”^[15] This assumes an equivalence between two dissimilar categories, whereas a biblical pro-life ethic acknowledges a necessary difference: the preborn baby and the murderer are the same in the ontological sense (both made in God’s image) but different in a moral sense (innocent of personal sin/guilty of personal sin).

Scripture teaches us to keep this distinction clear, and theologian Herman Bavinck helpfully reminds us that “God by no means holds the guilty to be innocent (Exod. 20:7; Neh. 1:3ff.).”^[16] In fact, God reserves some of his harshest punishments for those who show a sinful leniency to those deserving death (1 Samuel 15; 1 Kings 20). Apologist and former homicide detective, J. Warner Wallace, rightly explains the seriousness of this error, saying, “It is immoral for us to fail to see the difference between these two categories of humans.”^[17] To imply that the preborn child and the murderer are the same as image bearers, while ignoring the fact that the murder is guilty of major sin, is to dismiss a fundamental moral distinction and to devalue the preborn. When the biblical distinction is clear, it helps us see that when “guilty life” kills “innocent life,” the death of “guilty life” is perfectly just.

Response #3: Arbitrariness Devalues Human Life

A third response to Pope Leo XIV’s claim of contradiction is that opposition to the death penalty devalues human life. By ignoring God’s laws, sentencing for murder becomes arbitrary, undermining the value of the lives taken. Three recent examples demonstrate this:

1. In 2013, Jeffrey Powell broke into a home and stabbed a man to death in the middle of the night. He was sentenced to sixteen years to life in 2015 and released in 2024, having only served ten years of his sentence. His release places the value of the victim’s life at ten years of incarceration.^[18]
2. In a recent ruling by a judge in Travis County, Texas, Kendrix White, the man who murdered nineteen-year-old Harrison Brown on the University of Texas campus in 2017, was recently released from a mental hospital to outpatient care in 2025. Judge Tamara Needles’ ruling places the value of Harrison’s life at eight years of institutionalization.^[19]
3. In 2015, Ronald Exantus, stabbed six-year-old Logan Tipton to death and was sentenced to twenty years in 2018. He was released in 2025 after serving less than seven years.^[20] The court’s decision places the value of the child’s life at approximately seven years of incarceration.

Without God’s unchanging standard, the value of human life may be set at ten, eight, or seven years of punishment. Unless God’s law is justly applied, there is nothing to prevent an arbitrary value of one year, one month, or even one day. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops claims “The value of human life is being threatened by increasing use of the death penalty.”^[21] However, when we examine current sentencing practices, the absence of God’s divine law leads to what Calvin rightly referred to as “cruel inhumanity,” which fails to issue appropriate punishments for serious crimes.^[22] Greg Bahnsen warns, “If penal redress is not informed and guided by God’s objectively revealed law, then punishment is surely the ‘vain’ imposition of unauthorized human tyranny.”^[23] Therefore, a third response to the charge of contradiction is that the disregard for God’s law leads to arbitrary, tyrannical judgments, devaluing human life.

Conclusion

As an octogenarian, Sister Helen Prejean still argues against the death penalty on multiple social media platforms, and her bestselling book was released as a graphic novel in October 2025. Pope Leo XIV’s recent comment aligns with Prejean’s activism and continues this errant Catholic trajectory of the past thirty years. His recent statement invites pro-life/pro-justice Christians to respond with biblical truth, firmly convinced that “No amount of sentimentality can remove this divine command.”^[24]

As on every subject, we strive to emulate God (Eph. 5:1), and on a creaturely level, think His thoughts after Him.^[25] While many lines of argument can be given in response to the Pope’s recent statement, three short responses are helpful:

1) The Bible teaches us the death penalty is pro-life,

2) Innocent life and guilty life are not the same, and

3) Opposition to the death penalty devalues human life

I pray one day soon that Christian authors and filmmakers will produce a work as equally impactful as Dead Man Walking, but in support of just capital punishment. Only upon God’s law is the true dignity of man maintained.^[26] Therefore, Scripture compels us to oppose abortion and uphold the death penalty at the same time because only God can teach us how to be truly pro-life—no matter what the Pope may say to the contrary.

*****

1. Helen Prejean, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States (New York: Random House, 1993). ↑
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1^st ed., 2266 (London, England: Geoffrey Chapman, 1994), 488. The original French translation was published in 1992, followed by the English translation in 1994. ↑
3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2^nd ed., 2267, Revised in accordance with the official Latin text promulgated by Pope John Paul II, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997. ↑
4. “New Revision of Number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Death Penalty—Rescriptum “Ex Audientia SS.MI”, 2018. ↑
5. Dan Stockman, “No Point in Adding More Death,” The Global Sisters Report: A Project of National Catholic Reporter, January 1, 2015, Alluding to an inconsistent life ethic, Prejean says, “Catholics who say they’re against abortion but for the death penalty, I ask them, so you’re only against taking certain lives? And you can pick which ones?” ↑
6. WHAS11, “Pope Leo XIV says those against abortion but in favor of death penalty are ‘not really pro-life’,” YouTube, October 2, 2025. ↑
7. Joseph Bernardin, “A Consistent Ethic of Life,” Gannon Lecture, Fordham University, New York, NY, December 6, 1983; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Letter to the Bishops Regarding the New Revision of Number 2267 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Death Penalty,” Vatican City, August 1, 2018. ↑
8. W. S. Bruce, Ethics of the Old Testament (Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1895), 136. ↑
9. Edith Schaeffer, Lifelines: The Ten Commandments for Today (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1978), 123. ↑
10. Ron Gleason, The Death Penalty on Trial: Taking a Life for a Life Taken (Ventura, CA: Nordskog, 2008), 25. ↑
11. Cornelius Van Til, The Ten Commandments (Jordan Station, ON: Cantaro Publications, 2023), 146. ↑
12. John Calvin, A Commentary on Genesis (London: Banner of Truth, 1965), 276. ↑
13. The Greek term machairē is a metonym for execution. One example is found earlier in Romans 8:35, where it indicates death, and another is in Acts 12:2, where Luke uses it to refer to Herod Agrippa’s execution of James. ↑
14. John Calvin, Commentary on Romans, Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 429. ↑
15. Prejean, Helen, “Letter from Sr. Helen Prejean to Pope John Paul II, page 1, 1997.” DePaul University Special Collections and Archives, accessed November 13, 2025. Prejean underlined the words in her letter. ↑
16. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, vol. 4, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 4:222. ↑
17. J. Warner Wallace, “How Can We Be Pro-Life and Pro-Death Penalty at the Same Time?” Cold Case Christianity, May 4, 2020. ↑
18. “Convicted Murderer Granted Early Parole After Serving Only 10 Years in Prison,” Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office, April 30, 2024. ↑
19. Melia Masumoto and Brianna Perez, “Man Who Killed UT Student in 2017 to be Released from State Mental Hospital,” KVUE News, October 2, 2025. ↑
20. “Man Convicted in 2015 of Stabbing Death of KY Boy Released From Prison,” WKYT News, October 1, 2025. ↑
21. “Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions,” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, accessed November 13, 2025. ↑
22. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008), 977. ↑
23. Greg Bahnsen, No Other Standard: Theonomy and Its Critics (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), 216. ↑
24. Van Til, The Ten Commandments (Jordan Station, ON: Cantaro Publications and Paideia Press, 2023), 146. ↑
25. Vern Poythress, Redeeming Our Thinking About History: A God Centered Approach (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 33. ↑
26. William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, ed. Alan W. Gomes (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003), 302. ↑