In 1994 and 1995 Easter became an occasion to ask the Catholic Church and the Pope to speak out against the death penalty. It was in fact at Easter, in 1995, that Pope John Paul II pronounced, through the Evangelism Vitae Encyclical, a categorical "no" to the death penalty. The New Catechism, which still considered the death penalty to be legitimate, was then rewritten on the basis of the Evangelism Vitae.
On 25 December 1998, Hands off Cain organised a Christmas March to ask the Pope and the UN Secretary-general to take up the appeal for a moratorium on executions. During his blessing of Rome and the world, the Pope asked the countries that still carried out the death penalty to ban it. The message was broadcast in world vision to 45 countries, and reached many others through press and television reports.
