Pope revises Catechism’s teaching on death penalty, August 2, 2018

As reported at the Catholic Culture website on August 2, 2018: 

In a May 11 audience with Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Pope Francis approved the revised text of the Catechism’s number 2267, though the revision was not made public until August 2.
Citing the Pope’s October 2017 address, the new version states:
“Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption. Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”

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Here is some additional information from the same source

(https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=37998).

Yesterday, in a document circulated worldwide, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith quoted statements by St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis, concluding as follows: 
“The new formulation of number 2267 of the Catechism expresses an authentic development of doctrine that is not in contradiction with the prior teachings of the Magisterium,” the Congregation stated in its letter. “These teachings, in fact, can be explained in the light of the primary responsibility of the public authority to protect the common good in a social context in which the penal sanctions were understood differently, and had developed in an environment in which it was more difficult to guarantee that the criminal could not repeat his crime.”