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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider Prelate bucks death penalty

Prelate bucks death penalty

Published Dec 24, 2020 12:46 pm

It is never right to kill people, an official of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines Episcopal Commission on Prison Pastoral Care said amid calls to revive death penalty in the country.

Bishop Joel “Bong” Baylon
(MANILA BULLETIN FILE PHOTO)

"It is never right to kill people, even if it is done by the State," CBCP-ECPPC chairman Bishop Joel Baylon said in an interview Thursday.

"Justice is never punitive nor vindictive, otherwise we go back to the ancient principle of 'lex talionis,'  an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,  which is no longer accepted," he added.

The Legazpi prelate said there are other ways to make people responsible and accountable for the wrong they have done. 

"Bringing back the death penalty merely justifies the idea that it's okay to kill people," Baylon said.

He stressed that capital punishment is never a deterrent to crime.

"The death penalty does not solve the problem. Pope Francis himself has declared that it is 'inadmissible.' In his recent encyclical entitled ‘Fratelli Tutti,’ the Holy Father rejected capital punishment as a 'false answer that ultimatly does no more than introduce new elements of  destruction in the fabric of national and global society,'" said Baylon.

The issue on death penalty was revived following the brutal killing of a mother and her son by a policeman in Tarlac last Sunday.

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