Weep for the more than 1 million victims not Saddam
Jan 20, 2007
Sympathy should not be directed to former deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein for his hanging, but rather to the more than one million victims who died because of him, said a Catholic cardinal in Australia.
SYDNEY, Australia (Catholic Online, 1/16/2007) – In a Jan. 14 commentary piece, “Weep for victims, not the dictator,” that appeared in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, Cardinal George Pell, archbishop of Sydney, wrote that the pre-sunrise Dec. 30 Baghdad execution of Saddam Hussein while “already receding in to history … in death, as in life, he has provoked division.”
Labeling him “in the front rank of evil doers” and “an unpleasant piece of work,” the cardinal said that “I should pray for Saddam’s soul, but cannot weep for him.”
“I weep,” he added, “rather for his many victims.”
The cardinal’s column appeared one day before the Iraqi government’s attempt to close the chapter on Saddam Hussein’s quarter-century of repressive rule – by hanging two of his associates – brought Sunnis to the streets when the former leader’s half brother, Barzan Ibrahim, was decapitated.
Saddam, Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Saddam's Revolutionary court, were sentence to hang after they were found guilty of crimes against humanity for the killings of 148 Shiites after a failed 1982 assassination attempt against the former leader in the city of Dujail.
Saddam, executed four days after the appeals court upheld the verdicts, subjected to taunts just before the death sentence was carried out.
Cardinal Pell said that the Vatican “followed Catholic policy” in its explicit opposition to use of capital punishment in all cases, including that of the former Iraqi leader.
But he noted that the Catechism of the Catholic Church had stated that “governments have the right and duty to punish criminals with proportionate penalties ‘not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty,’” adding that Pope John Paul II had “removed this exception” since its 1994 publishing.
“Saddam’s case,” the cardinal said, “certainly falls into the category of ‘extreme gravity.’”
“I do not believe he was the worst tyrant of the second half of the 20th century, with competitors like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, but he is in the front rank of evil-doers,” he said.
He pointed to specific allegations against him, including: “one million people died in his war with Iran; he invaded Kuwait; systematically oppressed and killed the Kurds; murdered many of his own Iraqis and even enticed his sons-in-law home with false promises and had them executed within three days.”
The deposed Iraqi leader received legal representation, was afforded the ability to defend himself, even had the chance to appeal the verdict and has a marked grave in his home city, unlike many of his victims, Cardinal Pell noted.
“In an imperfect world, there is little ground for complaint here,” he said, though acknowleding that “his public execution to the taunts of opponents was symptomatic of the chaos in his country.”
“It was not entirely right and proper, but our sympathy should be directed first to his many victims,” he said.
The issue of punishment of criminals is a troubling one, Cardinal Pell noted, urging readers to “avoid two extremes” of vengeance – "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'' – of viewing “imprisonment primarily as an attempt to rehabilitate the criminal.”
“The traditional Christian teaching is a bit more complicated. Those who believe in God the creator accept that serious evil disturbs and distorts nature's proper order,” he said.
“Punishment is designed to redress this disorder,” he said, but adding that “the offender” must voluntarily accept the punishment to enhance “the return to equilibrium.”
In a Dec. 28 interview with the Rome daily La Repubblica, Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, condemned the Dec. 26 rejection of the appeal of the death sentence of Saddam Hussein by Iraq’s highest court and said that the execution would be the punishment of one crime with another crime.
The Vatican’s top official for peace and justice issues said that the death penalty is contrary to Catholic Church teachings.
On Dec. 30, the Vatican restated its opposition to the death penalty.
"The execution of a capital sentence is always tragic news, a cause of sadness, even when the person is guilty of terrible crimes,” said Holy See Press Office Director Father Federico Lombardi in a midday declaration hours after the death of the former Iraqi leader.
"The position of the Catholic Church against the death penalty has often been reiterated,” he said. "The killing of the guilty is not the way to rebuild justice and reconcile society, rather there is a risk of nourishing the spirit of revenge and inciting fresh violence.”
While acknowledging that there was “no doubt” that Saddam was responsible for crimes against humanity, Cardinal Martino said that did not change the church’s opposition to capital punishment.
The Vatican’s top justice and peace official's most recent remarks followed up on comments he made to an Italian news agency on the day the guilty judgment was rendered, when he decried the planned execution as a punishment that indicated “we are still at the stage of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’”
In the Dec. 28 interview, he reiterated the church’s teachings demanded that “human life must be protected from conception until a natural death.”
“The death penalty is not a natural death,” Cardinal Martino said. “And no one can give death, not even the state.”
Weep for the more than 1 million victims not Saddam