Memorial Service

This woman has had the courage to admit the mistakes she made at the beginning of her campaigning – the main one perhaps being her failure to deal with the relatives of the victims, a mistake long since put right.

Her eloquence and her unreserved conviction as to the immorality of state executions has led, over the last 30 years, to changes of mind and heart throughout the world.

In due course, she was in contact with two Popes, and in 2018 there was, thanks to her, a revision made in the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church, expressing complete rejection of the use of the death penalty and a call to all Catholics to work towards its global abolition.

She thus put right a wrong decision made 1,600 years ago. For the first 400 years of its existence, the Church was staunchly anti-death penalty.