VATICAN CONDEMNS SADDAM SENTENCING

a senior Vatican official lamented the death penalty imposed on former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on November 5, suggesting it marked a vengeful "eye for an eye" mentality still gripping turmoil-torn Iraq.
"For me, punishing a crime by another crime, that is killing for vengeance, means we are still at the stage of 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth'," said Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
"Capital punishment is not a natural death," Martino added. "God gave us life, and he alone can take it away. Life is a gift given to us by the Lord, and we must protect it from conception to natural death."
"Iraq is among those countries which haven't yet made the civilised choice of abolishing the death penalty," Martino said. "Today, modern society has all the means to render harmless someone who has committed a crime without recourse to the death penalty."