Pope Francis Calls Upon Crime Experts for Humane Justice System

The Holy Father said that justice has to involve the redemption of the offender and avoid confusing punishment with reparation for the crime.

(photo: Kyle Burkhart/CNA)

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has asked experts at an international conference on criminal law to consider a fuller understanding of justice that moves beyond mere punishment to redemption of the offender.

“It seems to me that the big challenge that we must all face is that the measures taken against evil do not stop with suppression, discouragement and isolation for those who caused it,” Pope Francis said, “but help them to reconsider, to walk in the paths of good, to be genuine people far from their miseries, becoming merciful themselves.”

Pope Francis made these thoughts known in a letter he sent to the participants of the 19th International Conference of the International Association of Penal Law and the Third Congress of the Latin American Association of Penal Law and Criminology.

“Therefore, the Church recommends a justice that is humanizing, genuinely reconciling, a justice that leads the offenders, through an educational way and through inspiring penance, to complete their rehabilitation and reintegration into the community.”

The letter, written in Spanish and dated May 30, focused on the three “steady elements” in the understanding of justice after sin: satisfaction or reparation for damage, confession and contrition.

The Pope pointed to the Parable of the Good Samaritan as an example of satisfaction that focused on “justice for the victim” rather than “executing the aggressor.”

“In our society, we tend to think that crimes are solved when the offender is captured and sentenced,” he noted, “without sufficient attention to the situation the victims are in.”

“But it would be a mistake to identify reparation only with punishment, to confuse justice with revenge, which only helps to increase violence, even if it is institutionalized,” he warned.

Instead, the Holy Father said, “we must move forward and do everything possible to correct, improve and educate the person to mature in all aspects.”

Criminals must be helped to “recognize and regret” their faults with an attitude of confession, he explained, since it is not infrequent that “crime is rooted in economic and social inequalities, networks of corruption and organized crime [whose agents are] seeking accomplices amongst the most powerful and victims among the most vulnerable.”

Pope Francis insisted that it is not enough to have just laws, but “responsible and capable people to implement them.”

Criminal law “requires a multidisciplinary approach” aimed at helping individuals to be “fully human, free, conscious and responsible,” he said. We must also remember that “we are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness.”

The Holy Father also referenced the Parables of the Good Shepherd and the Prodigal Son and the story of Jesus’ encounter with the adulterous woman as examples of God’s generous forgiveness.

“God welcomes us and offers us another chance if we open ourselves to the truth of penance and allow ourselves to be transformed by his mercy,” he said in his letter.

“Forgiveness, in fact, does not remove or diminish the requirement of rectification, proper justice or dispenses with the need for personal conversion,” he said, “but [it] goes further, seeking to restore relationships and reintegrate people into society.”

Pope Francis concluded his letter with an appeal to take the necessary steps to create “an inclusive society” where unnecessary suffering may be avoided, “especially among the most vulnerable.”