Gov. Pete Ricketts helped finance a ballot drive to reinstate capital punishment after lawmakers overrode his veto in 2015.

A former head of the E.P.A. warns that the pope’s message on the death penalty, like his message on the environment, may not make it to the pews.

The execution would occur a week after Pope Francis revealed new church teaching that deems the death penalty “inadmissible” under all circumstances.

“The huge thing,” she said, is the recognition by the church of “the inviolable dignity even of guilty people who have done terrible crimes.”

Pope Francis' revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to assert that capital punishment is morally inadmissible shows how the church can grow in its understanding of the implications of basic tenets of faith.

Pope Francis has revised the church’s catechism to state that the death penalty is no longer admissible.