"While the Catholic Church keeps stating that the State-legitimised authorities the focal passage of the Vatican statement on death penalty have a duty to protect society from aggressors, and that some states have traditionally included death penalty as a means to achieve such goal, the choice of such option can hardly be justified today". To corroborate all this, the Holy See lists the "many risks" that resorting to death penalty would involve: "the risk of punishing innocent people; the temptation to promote violent forms of revenge instead of a true sense of social justice; a clear offence to the inviolability of human life, by promoting a culture of violence and death". Not to mention that, for Christians, "it is also a form of contempt for the evangelical lesson on forgiveness". "Suppressing life concludes the statement never takes anyone to find any appreciable tool, through which society may punish offenders, while it can temporarily quench a thirst for revenge".
