17 January 2008 :

Elisabetta Zamparutti, Treasurer of the Italian Radicals and of Hands Off Cain has spoken about the belated intervention by the Pope on the death penalty at La Sapienza. She said "Ratzinger has had many occasions that were more important and more useful for expressing himself on the abolition of the death penalty and the moratorium, and he has missed all of them."
In fact, when we finished the Easter March at St Peters for the UN Moratorium on capital punishment, he didn't say a word. This was in contrast to what his predecessor did at the various marches that we have held.
During the debate at the UN, the Vatican spoke principally on sustaining amendments that acknowledged the right to life from conception that were presented by fundamentalist countries (Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iran, Libya and Sudan). In doing so, the Vatican therefore took the side of countries whose clear intention was to impede the approval of the resolution against the death penalty through a complete change of the test.   
The fundamentalism of the defence by the Vatican of the right to life from conception doesn't match the pragmatic approach it has taken on the death penalty, which it theoretically accepts. To use the words of Nunzio Apostolico in New York, its "use is necessary to protect society against an aggressor," save the acknowledgment that "society actually has many other ways of protecting its citizens."