News - July 2025

Join the bishops of Florida to pray a novena for an end to the use of the death penalty in our state. We will pray from August 6-14, 2025, concluding on the Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who was executed in an Auschwitz prison camp in 1941. We will continue to press the governor to stop signing death warrants, but prayer is powerful. Please join us.

The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) has requested that Gov. Ron DeSantis stay the July 31 scheduled execution of Edward Zakrzewski and commute his sentence to life imprisonment without parole.

On July 8, the bishops of Florida sent a letter to Governor Ron DeSantis requesting that he pause the signing of death warrants and meet with them to review the Church's teachings on the sanctity of human life. The letter is in response to a ninth death warrant signed by the governor this year. If the state executes Edward Zakrzewski on July 31, it would break Florida's record for the number of executions carried out in a single year. The state put Michael Bell to death by lethal injection on July 15, tying the previous record of eight executions set in 1984, and again in 2014.

The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) has requested that Gov. Ron DeSantis stay the July 15 scheduled execution of Michael Bell and commute his sentence to life imprisonment without parole.

Archbishop Wenski of Miami, president of the FCCB, and Bishop Dewane of Venice have issued statements on the new detention facility in the Everglades, known as "Alligator Alcatraz." The detention facility is located on the border of the Archdiocese of Miami and the Diocese of Venice.