Inadmissible

Even and at least in principle, the Church has only ever admitted the possibility of capital punishment when there was absolutely no other way of protecting public safety. No criminologist in the world would still say that that was ever the case, so the death penalty is, to use the Pope's carefully chosen theological word, inadmissible.

As for public execution, that certainly happens in Iran and in the Afghanistan on which we wasted 20 years of blood and treasure. We are as sure as we can be that it happens in North Korea. The Government that we are bombing the Houthis to shore up has a penchant for the practice in Yemen. And the so-called Islamic State to which we have handed over Syria has always been an enthusiastic uploader of its numerous and often choreographed decapitations.

But beheading in the public square would appear to have been discontinued of late in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, while Donald Trump is turning the United States into another country corruptly and brutally ruled from gaudy palaces by a single family and its hangers-on, when he and Pete Hegseth wheel out the paraplegic Dr Nidal Hasan in front of both a firing squad and a webcam, then they will deserve, though not receive, the opprobrium even of the House of Saud.