Belonging to the human family

Challenging the death penalty in Kentucky & beyond

Two years ago I saw a notice in our local weekly that a Black 20-year-old man had been arrested for the killing of a white woman a year and a half earlier. The prosecutor was planning to ask the jury to apply the death penalty. The crime had occurred in Marion County, Ky., and that’s where the trial would be.

I brought the item to our Motherhouse Peace Committee; we agreed to write letters to the pastors of Marion County faith congregations, asking them to preach against the death penalty — because it’s important, but also because a congregant might be in the jury pool.

Meanwhile, Carolyn Jaramillo CoL invited the attorney for the accused, Rebecca DiLoreto, to lunch. Rebecca takes on young people’s death penalty cases, and she told us the Kentucky situation — 23 men and one woman condemned and waiting, but no executions since 2008 because of a judge’s stay. Rebecca urged us to demand that Gov. Andy Beshear commute those sentences, and to call on Archbishop Shelton Fabre to instruct Beshear to commute the sentences.

Rebecca went on, “You live 9 miles from Gethsemani. You know Dom Elias Dietz, the abbot. Write to him. Tell him to tell the governor to commute these sentences.”

The death penal­ty is inad­mis­si­ble because it is an attack on the invi­o­la­bil­i­ty and dig­ni­ty of the per­son.

Pope Leo

Carolyn also invited the prosecuting attorney, the one asking for the death penalty, to dinner. She explained the law, and that she was doing her job as she understood it.

The young man mentioned earlier pleaded guilty and received a sentence of life with the possibility of parole. Meanwhile, an 18-year-old woman here, also represented by Rebecca, is in jail under threat of a death sentence. The Motherhouse Peace Committee invited neighbors to join us and write to pastors and newspaper editors as well as to Gov. Beshear, Archbishop Shelton and Abbot Dietz. You can write too. Please write, wherever you are. At Loretto Motherhouse, we organize letter-writing campaigns.

Then we heard about For Whom the Bells Toll. Under this organization’s direction, Loretto Communications publishes the names of those scheduled to be executed in the coming week in the weekly Loretto prayer list. We pray for them at the Sunday petitions. On the day of an execution we toll the Motherhouse bell at 3 p.m. We erect a sign at the Motherhouse entrance that reads, “We oppose the execution this week,” and we wear buttons saying the same. In the months we’ve been doing this, we’ve had a lot of conversations with visitors. Check out the Death Penalty Action website to learn what you can do.

In April, Pope Leo expressed support for those working to abolish the death penalty, stating, “The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment.” He prays that these ​“efforts will lead to a greater acknowledgment of the dig­ni­ty of every per­son, and will inspire oth­ers to work for the same just cause.”

Read all the articles in the fall 2026 issue of Loretto Magazine.