Pope Leo XIV Rejected Death Penalty, Chemical Castration for Rapist of Three-Year-Old Girl
Bishop Robert Prevost denounced capital punishment as an act of “revenge,” inadmissible even for the worst crimes
Pope Leo XIV categorically rejected both the death penalty and chemical castration for a pedophile who savagely raped a three-year-old girl when he was bishop in Peru, aligning himself with Pope Francis’s magisterial repudiation of capital punishment even in the face of heinous crimes.
Despite Peru having the highest rate of female child rape in South America, Leo XIV, who was then Bishop Robert Prevost of Chiclayo, told La República that “the death penalty is inadmissible even in a case as tragic as this one” since “we must always be in favor of life at all times.”
“You have to find other ways of seeking justice,” he said, “but another way of chemical castration is being discussed a lot, but in countries where it is used, the result is not convincing either.”
Prevost posted his video interview to Twitter on April 19, 2022.
Remorseless Rapist Confesses Crime
The prelate was interviewed on television after a 48-year-old taxi driver, Juan Antonio Enríquez García, kidnapped a three-year-old girl identified in the press only as Damaris on April 12, 2022, in the José Leonardo Ortiz district of Chiclayo using a minivan. A remorseless García later confessed to her abduction and rape.
Police captured Garcia on April 13 in a house under construction. Damaris was found asleep among cardboard cartons; her body had been bound by packing tape for over 15 hours. Police found sexually explicit videos recording the sexual assaults against her on García’s mobile phone. He had perpetrated multiple forms of perverse sexual acts on the child until she fell unconscious, police said.
The child was rushed to Las Mercedes Hospital and later transferred to the Almanzor Aguinaga Asenjo National Hospital, where she underwent reconstructive surgery. Damaris and her parents also received counseling.
Peruvians Call for Reinstating the Death Penalty
Upon Garcia’s arrest, thousands of protesters gathered outside the Criminal Investigations Division of the Peruvian National Police, demanding the death penalty for the “monster of Chiclayo.” Stuffed toys accompanied banners calling for capital punishment in cases of child rape.
In the capital city of Lima and other cities across Peru, children and entire families dominated the protests, encouraging other citizens to join the march because “one of their sons or daughters could also be abused.” Chiclayo Mayor Marco Gasco canceled celebrations for the city’s 187th anniversary following the horrific crime.
Protestors expressed outrage that Garcia had been sentenced to nine months of preventive detention instead of receiving a more severe punishment. Peru abolished capital punishment in 1979.
Less than a month later, García was found dead in the Challapalca Penitentiary, one of Peru’s three maximum-security prisons. Prison guards found him tied by the neck with a white cloth attached to one end of his cell bars on May 24, 2022. He had previously requested special protection because other inmates had threatened to kill him.
Leo XIV Denounces Capital Punishment as Revenge
In his response to the rape of Damaris, Prevost denounced the death penalty as an act of revenge rather than just punishment. “Seeking blood for blood, well, this is not an answer,” he said in a televised interview, where he is seen wearing a black face mask.
The then-bishop of Chiclayo warned that society should not “respond with something that satisfies the desire for revenge” and “that does not take us to the height of what is the human being,” but “rather makes us descend lower each time revenge [is taken].”
“The indignation [of the masses] is perfectly understandable,” Leo XIV said. As a “diocese we have also published a statement rejecting all these acts of different kinds of sexual abuse, domestic violence, kidnappings, human trafficking, etc.
“It is important, as I say, to look for the causes of these manifestations [of pedophilia] and to look for solutions that will really have a greater effect,” he noted. “The desire for revenge, well, it’s natural. People’s indignation surfaces, it is perfectly understandable, but that indignation has to be channeled rather into reforms in legislation, society, in the training of young people.”
When asked about castrating child rapists, he replied: “Well you have to go much deeper, and well, it is the experts who will have to evaluate all of this, but the deterrent effects of the measures until now have not been seen as effective to control these manifestations [of pedophilia].”
In 2014, Prevost tweeted, “It’s time to end the death penalty.”
Responding to Pope Francis’s declaration Fiducia Supplicans last October, which permits same-sex blessings, he said, “You have to remember there are still places in Africa that apply the death penalty, for example, for people who are living in a homosexual relationship.”
Peru Faces Epidemic of Child Rape
The Peruvian women’s rights organization Movimiento Manuela Ramos says that every day, four girls under the age of 14 in that country are raped. According to the National Survey of Social Relations (ENARES), rape mainly affects girls and adolescents, with one out of every three victims being under 14 years of age (about 33%). The rape risk threshold is between 10 and 13 years of age.
Nearly 70% of victims of sexual violence are under 17 years old. In January and February of 2022, 1,606 cases of sexual assault were reported in Peru; of those, 1,078 victims were minors. In 2020, there were 5,985 rapes; 3,928 of the victims were minors.
The Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations (MIMP) reported that in 2024, approximately 11,200 girls were victims of sexual abuse. The organization also reported 22,456 rapes in 2021, then 27,262 in 2022, and a spike of 30,837 cases in 2023. Between 2017 and 2018, some 4,943 girls under 14 were sexually assaulted. In 2010, MIMP reported that 34% of girls between 10 and 19 years of age who were raped became pregnant as a result.
According to Jaris Mujica’s book Sexual Violence in Peru, some rape victims commit suicide or are murdered by their rapists.
Catholic Church’s U-Turn on Capital Punishment
In a historic first, Pope Francis in 2018 reversed biblical and magisterial teaching, declaring the death penalty to be “inadmissible.” Last year, he reinforced the change in the magisterium by adding it to his declaration Dignitas Infinita.
In December, Francis begged President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of 40 criminals on federal death row. That group included child killers and rapists.
Pope Leo XIV’s Augustinian order takes its name from St. Augustine of Hippo, who declared, “The same divine law which forbids the killing of a human being allows certain exceptions.”
The death penalty “is in no way contrary to the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ for the representative of the State’s authority to put criminals to death, according to the Law or the rule of rational justice,” Augustine wrote in his book The City of God.
Cardinal Avery Dulles clarified that further. “The Catholic magisterium does not, and never has, advocated unqualified abolition of the death penalty. I know of no official statement from popes or bishops, in the past or in the present, that denies the right of the state to execute offenders at least in certain extreme cases.”
Death Penalty and Chemical Castration for Rape
In 2020, Bangladesh joined Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, China, and India in sanctioning the death penalty for rape after a surge in sexual violence against women. In 2018, India approved the death penalty for rapists of girls under 12 after nationwide outrage over the gang rape of an eight-year-old girl.
Several countries also punish rapists with chemical castration. In 2011, South Korea permitted chemical castration for child molesters who are at risk of repeating their crimes. In 2019, Ukraine approved chemical castration for rapists by force.
The Czech Republic is the only country permitting irreversible surgical castration for sexual crimes against women. In 2020, the northwestern Kaduna state in Nigeria introduced surgical castration as a penalty for pedophilia. The death penalty will follow castration if the victim is under the age of 14.
Seven U.S. states — California, Florida, Guam, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, and Wisconsin — legalized the chemical castration of rapists and molesters as a condition of sentencing or as a means of early release. Mandatory chemical castration is also permitted in Russia and Poland.
Last September, Italy moved toward legalizing chemical castration, with lawmakers creating a committee to draft laws on treating violent sex offenders with androgen-blocking drugs.
Dr. Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.