Many observers agree that Pope Francis leaves behind a legacy of reform, modernisation and compassion.

We’ve already looked at two areas on this in our Francis the reformer posts – his (relatively) warm stance towards the LGBTQ+ community (12.43 post), and his less flexible stance on contraception (13.50 post).

Now, a look at how he approached the death penalty and prisons.

‘All Christians should struggle for end of death penalty’

Francis changed the church’s position on the death penalty, declaring it inadmissible in all circumstances.

In 2014, he said: “It is impos­si­ble to imag­ine that states today can­not make use of anoth­er means than cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to defend peo­ples’ lives from an unjust aggres­sor.”

He cit­ed the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says that the death penal­ty can be used only if it is the ​”only pos­si­ble way of effec­tive­ly defend­ing human lives against the unjust aggres­sor,” and that mod­ern alter­na­tives for pro­tect­ing soci­ety mean that ​”cas­es in which the exe­cu­tion of the offend­er is an absolute neces­si­ty are very rare, if not prac­ti­cal­ly nonex­is­tent”.

But Francis went further, calling for compassion and better conditions in prisons, too.

Pope Francis added at the time: “All Christians and peo­ple of good will are thus called today to strug­gle not only for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, whether it be legal or ille­gal and in all its forms, but also to improve prison con­di­tions, out of respect for the human dig­ni­ty of per­sons deprived of their lib­er­ty.”

Lifelong commitment to ‘do what Jesus did’

Francis was committed to helping the poor and disadvantaged throughout his life, including before his time as pontiff.

In Argentina, as a younger man, he spent weekends visiting the disadvantaged parishes. He would visit prisons then, too, travelling by bus or metro to speak to prisoners, the poor and priests in slums and jails.

And last Thursday, just a few days before his death, while frail himself, Francis kept an appointment to visit a prison in Rome.

He met for nearly 30 minutes with some 70 inmates at the Regina Caeli prison in Rome’s Trastevere neighbourhood.

It’s a prison Francis has visited before to perform the annual Holy Thursday ritual of washing the feet of 12 people to re-enact Christ’s gesture of humble service of washing the feet of 12 apostles before his crucifixion.

Francis told the inmates he couldn’t do it this year, given his health, but wanted to nevertheless be with them and “do what Jesus did on Holy Thursday”.