We were saddened to learn of the death of Curtis Windom, who had been imprisoned in Florida for 33 years for crimes for which the victims' families had forgiven him. They had joined their voices to those of many others from around the world who had asked that he be granted clemency. Over 10,000 appeals were sent through this website alone. We stand with all those who supported the fight to save Curtis's life, together with humanity and justice.
Lk 4: 16-30
We are gathered together to pray with faith, but also with fear and trembling, for the salvation of Curtis Windom. A 59-year-old African American who has been on death row for 33 years. His execution was announced in Florida last night. His life now depends on whether or not his final appeal to the Supreme Court of the state, which has already executed 11 people since the beginning of the year, will be accepted.
We are united with him, with his family, especially his daughter, who, after having tragically lost her mother and grandmother at the hands of Curtis, her father, has long since found the strength of reconciliation and forgiveness, as have her relatives. As the hours are dangerously shortening, as the days have already shortened, they have been by his side, and life and reconciliation have poured back into Curtis' soul and humanity.
A balm that gave him the strength to resist, and a sense of amazement, together with the fraternity of those who know him personally here in Rome and in the United States and who have accompanied him over the years with the Community of Sant'Egidio. About ten thousand people have signed the petition we launched, and I am sure Curtis feels this embrace. Many Americans, including friends such as George Kain, have joined us in the same invocation and the same effort.
Curtis knows that we are addressing the God of life, who manifested himself in Nazareth to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. None of us is righteous, none of us is innocent, only the Lord Jesus, and we are all brothers and sisters in humanity. We are all in need of redemption, we are all in need of forgiveness, we are all participants, as the Jubilee of Hope reminds us, in the gift of new life.
If we are friends with Curtis and his family, if he considers us a happy part of his humanity that has been wounded by evil, it is because we have received the eye salve of the Gospel, which has opened our eyes. We are the blind who have regained their sight, in this age of force, violence, conflict and revenge.
And in the eyes of this man, for whom we pray, condemned to death by others, by unjust laws, by indifference, we read his fervent prayer: may what the Lord proclaimed in the synagogue of his city also come true for me. I have come to proclaim liberty to captives, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Grace, we ask with one heart and one soul, knowing that what is impossible for men is always possible for God. We are not resigned, above all, above all, we have no right to be resigned. We cannot say there is nothing to be done, there is nothing to hope for, when the hand reaching out to you is that of a dying man.
Jesus was the target of death plots even before he was put on the cross. We have listened to this: When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
Plans for death conceived and carried out not by ruthless criminals, but by pious, modest worshippers. Villagers with their families, who were afraid of unarmed goodness. Yet Jesus passed among them and continued on his way. Jesus never stopped in the face of these threats. Jesus continues to walk among us, here in the United States, everywhere. He enters into our daily lives, he enters into prisons, next to those who, as he tells us in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25, are and will always remain his little brothers.
Jesus continued to raise up friends of life and children of his hope, among us sinners and among all those in need of mercy. And he inaugurated the year of grace also in the hearts and lives of those who have denied him. Jesus is alive, risen, beside the Father, despite and through the cross.May our last thought this evening, of all of us here, of those who are connected, be directed to him, to the living one, who came to deliver humanity from the darkness of death. May our prayer embrace our brother Curtis and reach his heart.
May the Lord make him hear what the prophet Isaiah announced to the people of Israel, and may we hear these words addressed to him personally this evening, this night: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the water, I will be with you; in the rivers you will not drown. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, the flames shall not consume you. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in return for you. Because you are precious in my eyes and glorious, and because I love you. I give men in return for you, and peoples in exchange for your life.
Preserve, O Lord, the life of Curtis from evil and death. Remember him and us, O Lord, in your kingdom. Amen.
Insight on the blog ‘No death penalty’, the story of Curtis Windom
