Catholics call out DeSantis, pray for end to death penalty after rapid-fire executions

About 200 people prayed in a Roman Catholic church in Tallahassee Thursday night for Gov. Ron DeSantis to reject capital punishment as a deterrent to crime and embrace the Christian doctrines of forgiveness and acknowledging that every human life has value.

The prayer session was held on the eve of the release of a report by a death penalty watchdog group that attributes a 25% increase in executions nationwide to Gov. Ron DeSantis signing six warrants after three years of no executions.

It was part of the annual "The Cities for Life" service, an international observation that included the simultaneous ringing of church bells in 2,000 cities in 80 countries to mark the 236th anniversary of the abolishment of capital punishment in Tuscany by the future Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II.

DeSantis was raised in the Roman Catholic faith and touts it as part of his blue-collar heritage – his mother’s siblings are a priest and nun in Ohio – but it is unclear whether and where he still worships.

He has clashed before with the Florida Conference of Bishops on dignity of life issues related to immigration and capital punishments.

More: Reprehensible behavior Catholic GOP lawmakers quiet as bishop criticizes Florida for migrant relocation flights

As he prepared for a presidential campaign earlier this year, DeSantis signed legislation to include child rape as a capital offense, made it easier to impose a death sentence and approved six executions. That came despite public pleas from the bishops for him to choose life and find death sentences a morally indefensible punishment.

“It is puzzling,” said Mary Anne Hoffman, a member of Tallahassee Citizens Against the Death Penalty, about the governor’s renewed interest in capital punishment. Hoffman attended the 90-minute prayer service, which included the reading of the names of the 105 people executed in Florida since 1976 along with the names of their 215 victims.

DeSantis’ press office said Florida executions were delayed for three years because of emergencies like the COVID pandemic and hurricanes.

The six death warrants DeSantis signed this year is the most since 2014 when former Gov. Rick Scott was up for reelection and signed eight. And they tie the number of executions approved by Florida’s last Roman Catholic governor, Jeb Bush in 2000, the year his brother was elected president, according to Florida Department of Corrections records.

But unlike Bush and other high-ranking elected officials who were Catholic, such as former CFO Tom Gallagher, there have been no reported sightings of DeSantis at a Sunday church service during the five years he's lived in Tallahassee as governor.

“I can’t speak for what’s in his mind, if he’s going with his faith, but I don’t think he goes to church, he doesn’t attend here,” said Suzanne Printy, of the Mercy and Justice Core Community at Good Shepherd Catholic Church, which organized the prayer service.

A question to the governor’s office about whether DeSantis attends Sunday mass in Tallahassee or belongs to a local parish is pending in his office.

There are 286 men and two females on Florida’s death row. On average they spend 23 years waiting to be executed, according to the state.

More: Capitol Protest Dillbeck's anti-death penalty prayer vigil at Capitol may have been the last

Printy opened the service by telling the group that capital punishment is cruel, expensive, arbitrary and racist. She handed out flyers that included addresses for DeSantis, Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, also a Roman Catholic, and House Speaker Paul Renner.

Maria DeLiberato, a former prosecutor and now executive director for the group Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty , urged attendees to write and explain how $52 million a year is spent to maintain a system that “sells a false bill of goods,” that provides vengeance while promising justice.

And as a group, they prayed that Florida elected officials “will give greater witness to the dignity of every human life and end the use of the death penalty.”

The evening's keynote speech came from Andy and Kate Grosmaire, whose teenage daughter was killed with a shotgun by a boyfriend. Andy is a deacon at Tallahassee's Co-Cathedral of St. Thomas More; Kate authored "Forgiving my Daughter's Killer."

They explained how the idea of restorative justice enabled them to forgive the shooter and to honor their child’s memory and heal.

Florida is an outlier for capital punishment, even in the South. Of the five states to execute people in 2023, Florida leads Alabama, which carried out two death sentences, and is second to Texas, which carried out eight.

The Florida bishops are following a path set by the late pope St. John Paul II and Pope Francis in the belief that capital punishment is no longer needed as a public safety measure. In recent years they have made the church’s opposition to it a priority.

“This is not a political statement. We’re not just trying to change the law. We feel this in our heart,” said Bishop William Wack, who leads the Pensacola-Tallahassee Diocese. “We’re standing up for our faith. We believe in the consistency of life, from all stages, womb to tomb, natural conception, natural death."

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on him Twitter: @CallTallahassee.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida Catholics oppose Gov. DeSantis' push for capital punishment