19/12/2000

DEATH PENALTY
Catholic-led effort against death penalty gets attention at U.N.

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- A campaign led by the lay Catholic community of Sant�Egidio for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty got the personal endorsement of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Dec. 18.

He noted that only sovereign states have the power to grant your petition.� But he added, ��I pray that they will do so.�

The secretary-general made his remarks in accepting a symbolic presentation of 3.2 million signatures that had been gathered from 145 countries in a two-year campaign.

They were presented by Mario Marazzit�, a producer for the Italian network RAI who is coordinator of the death penalty project far Sant�Egidio; Paul Hoffrnan, chairrnan of the international executive committee of Amnesty International, and Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph of Medaille and author of the best-selling book �Dead Man Walking.�

The presentation was made in the form of a large book that had representative pages of Signatures from various countries pasted in, and special pages af signatures by prominent individuals.

Signers included Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, chairman of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000; Cardinal Edward I. Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council far Promoting Christian Unity; Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and author who won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize; Abdurrahman Wahid, a Muslim who is president of Indonesia; and Anglican Archbishop George Carey of Canterbury.

Sant�Egidio said that Catholic signers included more than 100 bishops, archbishops and cardinals, and more than 100 superiors of men�s and women�s religious orders.

In a practice inaugurated in December 1999 for observance throughout 2000, the Colosseum in Rome Is illuminated each time an execution anywhere in the world Is commuted or suspended, and anytime a nation abolishes capital punishment. Sant�Egidio said the Colosseum was illuminated Dec. 18 to mark the U.N. events.

Following the presentation of signatures, a rally was held outside the United Nations to support the moratorium.

A subsequent press conference was held in the United Nations under the auspices of the U.N. Correspondents Association and drew Marazziti, Hoffman and Sister Prejean.

They were joined by Susan Sarandon, who played Sister Prejean in a 1995 movie version of * �Dead Man Walking�; Tim Robbins, director of the movie; and William Nieves, a Philadelphia resident who said he spent six years on Pennsylvania�s death row before winning exoneration in a retrial in October.

Robbins said he was working on a play version of� �Dead Man Walking� that could easily be produced by community groups.

Later at a prayer service, Sister Prejean told the congregation she would help Robbins and Sarandon work on the play.

She said people who had not confronted the issue of the death penalty had to grow into an understanding that it was wrong, and the play was ��going to help people through this journey.�

Sister Prejean also spoke about executions that took place recently in )Japan, saying she planned to visit there in )January.

According to figures released at the press conference, Sant�Egidio gathered 2.7 million of the signatures, Amnesty International collected 300,000, mostly from Europe, and a project led by Sister Prejean, Moratorium 2000, secured 200,000, all from the Americas.

Marazziti said in an interview that Sant�Egidio gathered signatures through its members in the 40 countries where it IS present and through allies in other countries, including China. Signatures will continue to be sought, he said.

At the press conference, much of the questioning by reporters and comment by Sister Prejean and others centered on the death penalty in the United States and President-elect George W. Bush�s support far it.

But at the end, Hoffman intervened to point out that many other countries have the death penalty, and that larger numbers of executions take place in China, which he said allowed for no effective appeals.

��We need to focus on the whole world,� he said.

Annan said that ��many persons of wisdom and integrity� believed ��the right to life can be forfeited by those who take life,� and members of the United Nations were ��deeply divided� on the issue.

But he noted that in 1989 the UN. General Assembly provided far renunciation of the death penalty in an optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Since then, 43 countries have ratified the document and seven others have signed it, he said.

If I may be permitted to express a persona! view, I believe that those states are right,� Annan said. * �The forfeiture of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process. And I believe that future generations, throughout the world, will come to agree.�

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