A new national survey reveals a striking divide between the Catholic Church’s teaching on capital punishment and the views held by many Catholics in the United States.
According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted July 6–12, 65% of U.S. Catholics favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder. Among Catholic respondents, 28% said they “strongly” favor capital punishment.
The findings place Catholics close to the American public as a whole. According to Pew, 66% of U.S. adults favor the death penalty for those convicted of murder, while 32% oppose it.
Pew surveyed 3,554 U.S. adults who are members of its nationally representative American Trends Panel. The survey has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.
The survey also examined the issue from a moral perspective. According to Pew, 64% of Catholics said the death penalty is morally justified when someone has committed murder, while 32% said it is morally wrong.
Those findings stand in significant tension with the Catholic Church’s current teaching on capital punishment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.”
The teaching is contained in paragraph 2267 of the Catechism following a revision promulgated under Pope Francis in 2018.
Pope Leo XIV has also spoken directly against capital punishment. According to EWTN News, the pope said in April, “I condemn capital punishment. I believe that human life is to be respected and that all people — from conception to natural [death] — their lives should be respected and protected.”
The survey suggests that many Catholics have not adopted that position in their own views on the death penalty, even as the Church emphasizes the dignity of human life throughout its entire course.
Americans more broadly also expressed significant concerns about how capital punishment functions in practice. According to Pew, 59% said the death penalty does not deter people from committing serious crimes, while 39% said it does. Additionally, 73% said there is at least some risk that an innocent person could be executed.
Views on capital punishment also differed sharply according to political affiliation. According to Pew, 84% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents favor the death penalty, including 47% who strongly favor it. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were almost evenly divided, with 51% supporting the death penalty and 48% opposing it.
The survey also found differences based on age and education, with younger adults and college graduates generally less supportive of capital punishment than some older and less highly educated groups.
For Catholics, however, the findings raise a question that goes beyond American political divisions.
The Church’s opposition to capital punishment is rooted in its teaching on the dignity of the human person, including the dignity of those who have committed grave crimes. The Catechism teaches that the death penalty is inadmissible and states that the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”
Yet the Pew findings indicate that nearly two-thirds of American Catholics continue to favor capital punishment for convicted murderers.
The gap between those views and Catholic teaching highlights an ongoing challenge for the Church in the United States as it seeks to proclaim the dignity of every human life — from conception until natural death — even in some of society’s most difficult and emotionally charged circumstances.
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