Christians all over the world yesterday joined together in a global protest against the death penalty. Monuments and religious buildings were illuminated in more than 300 separate cities across the globe in a loud cry to bring a halt to the history of the death penalty sentence.

The head of the Sant EgidioCommunity’s Anti Death Penalty Campaign, Stefania Tallei reported that the project began in Rome in 2002. She said, “We lit up the Coliseum to increase awareness in the problem of the death penalty all over the world. Since then every year on November 30 monuments in many parts of the world are illuminated to encourage as many people as possible to join our campaign.”

In Italy’s capital, the day was commemorated by a meeting at the Palazzo Leopardi and a march in the streets leading towards the Coliseum.

The death penalty was abolished by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany on November 30 1786, and again in the future this date symbolises the on which the Grand Duke Leopoldo passed a law to abolish torture and the death penalty.

Much attention has been given to the USA to abolish fully the death penalty. An enormous unevenness in the way that similar death row crimes are punished has been revealed across the states. California, for example processes death penalty appeals extremely slowly, where as the state of Texas has followed through with death row sentences on a scale three-times more than the next closest state since the Supreme Court reinstated the Death Penalty in 1976.

The mentally disabled were given full exemption of the death penalty two years ago by the Supreme Court, and in 2003 the governor of Illinois struck off the entire death row list, which at the time was the eighth largest in the USA. More recently in June of this year, the highest court in the state of New York threw out the death penalty laws.

America has also seen a large change of public opinion over the past decade. In 1994 a massive 80% of American citizens approved the need for capital punishment. However, the current day figure has dropped significantly to 66% (statistics from Gallup polls).

The worldwide protest that took place all over the world yesterday included the following major cities:
Milan, Florence, Naples, Genoa, Palermo, Turin, Venice, Madrid, Barcelona, Vienna, Brussels, Geneva, Berlin, Paris, Dublin, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Tirana and Kosovo. For the first time; Mexico City and the Mexican President, Fox, Buenos Aires, San Salvador, Bogota and Medellin (Colombia); Canberra and Wellington; Atlanta, Porto Alegre (Brazil) and Montreal.