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If the death penalty was just some "rule" people invented, it might be okay to change it, but it was GOD who set that up - He said repeatedly:

Genesis 9:6
Whoever sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man.

Exodus 21:12
"Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death.

Leviticus 24:17-22
"Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution—life for life. Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.’

Numbers 35:33
"'Do not pollute the land where you are. Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it.

Deuteronomy 5:17
"You shall not murder.

The types of crimes that result in sentences of life without parole are so heinous that the perps have given notice to society that the they are not fit to be among us. How about having sympathy for victims? And how about protecting society from evildoers?

Agree, but can also see the religious/Christian side of it. In the Bible, Jonah tried to run from Nineveh because he deemed the people to be too vile to merit being saved - God had other plans as He is the One who decides such things. In the Catholic doctrine (according to a Nun teacher when I was younger, if one had a choiuce that would result in the death of a child or of an adult, one should take the action which spared the adult - the reason being that the child would go to Heaven as there had not been time to make the decision of whether or not to accept Christ, while you could not be sure the adult had yet made the decision. IOW, err on the side of giving a soul as much chance as possible to be redeemed, no matter how vile you consider them to be. Just as many who assert they are strict constitutionalists would have us do un-constitutional things because "they make sense", many religious/Christian folks use their own compass vs. God's compass.

The types of crimes that result in sentences of life without parole are so heinous that the perps have given notice to society that the they are not fit to be among us.

How about having sympathy for victims? And how about protecting society from evildoers?

Forms of punishment are a matter of prudential judgement, based on first principles of justice and public safety. The pope admitted as much, saying that the Church has always upheld the authority of the State to utilize the death penalty as a way of protecting the public. In this respect, he is following the teaching of Pope John Paul II.

The Catechism states:

2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.
If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."68

These circumstances may be largely true in the West, but not in most parts of the world. "Supermax" prisons are the only prisons where other prisoners and guards can be reasonably well protected from convicted murderers. These prisons are very expensive.

The pope also overlooks the possibility of regime change, where, for example, a communist could assume the presidency and pardon convicted murderers, endangering the public.

The Church teaches infallibly when outlining the moral principles that should guide the State with regard to determining criminal punishments.

While priests and bishops may feel called to speak out against particular governments in particular cases with regard to what they perceive to be unjust punishment, they would not be acting infallibly when doing so.