The positon of the Catholic Church on capital punishment has varied throughout history, with the Church becoming significantly more critical of the practice since the mid-20th century. In 2018, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was revised to read that "in the light of the Gospel" the death penalty is "inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person" and that the Catholic Church "works with determination for its abolition worldwide." The Church generally moved away from any explicit condoning or approval of capital punishment and adopted a disapproving stance on the issue by the mid-20th century. Modern Church figures such as Pope John Paul II, Pope Francis, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have actively discouraged the imposition of the death penalty and advocated for its abolition. Since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church became staunchly opposed to the death penalty in the vast majority of applications. During his papacy, John Paul II appealed for a consensus to end the death penalty on the ground that it was "both cruel and unnecessary". Pope Innocent I (405) Pope Innocent I in his letter Ad Exsuperium, Episcopum Tolosanum (PL 20, 495) defended the death penalty: Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas reaffirmed this position. The following is a summary of Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 3, Chapter 146 which was written by Aquinas prior to writing the Summa Theologica. In it, Thomas Aquinas supports death penalty. Reformation period to modern era (1520–1900) (1520) During the Leipzig Debate prior to his excommunication, then-Catholic priest Martin Luther made commentary against the morality of burning heretics to death. His position was given by the 1520 papal bull Exsurge Domine as "[t]hat heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit"; as such, it was one of the statements specifically in the bull which the pope declared as "condemn[ed], disapprove[ed], and entirely reject[ed] as respectively heretical, or scandalous, or false, or offensive to pious ears, or seductive of simple minds, and in opposition to Catholic truth". Roman Catechism (1566) The Roman Catechism or "Catechism of the Council of Trent", in its section on the Fifth Commandment, teaches that civil authority, having power over life and death as "the legitimate avenger of crime", may commit "lawful slaying" as "an act of paramount obedience to this Commandment which prohibits murder" by giving "security to life by