Comment & Debate
John Paul II was one of the strongest advocates of life without parole over capital punishment, and applied the above rationale. He strongly upheld the Catholic principle of repentance as well as social forgiveness, in the tradition of the teachings of Jesus Christ, and maintained that any just legal order would need to apply these principles at the same time as penalizing criminals. He argued that life imprisonment was the best route to achieving all the objectives of redress, societal protection, and restitution simultaneously.[1].