Pope John Paul II has appealed to the Texas Governor, Mr George W. Bush, to spare the life of a convicted murderer, Odell Barnes.
Barnes faces execution on March 1st for a murder he claims he never committed.
"On behalf of His Holiness Pope John Paul II, I have the honour to approach you for the purpose of presenting an appeal for clemency for Mr Odell Barnes," Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo of Washington said in a letter sent to Mr Bush yesterday on behalf of the Pope.
The pontiff "prays that the life of Mr Barnes may be saved through the compassion and magnanimity of yourself, Mr Governor, and through the Board of Pardons and Paroles," said the letter, published yesterday by a Texas coalition against capital punishment.
Barnes (31) was convicted of the murder in 1989 of his girlfriend. In 1991 he was sentenced to die by lethal injection.
In 1997 a new team of lawyers took his case and uncovered evidence they said showed Barnes was framed by police investigators who planted evidence against him.
Despite the lawyers' appeals, Texas judicial authorities have refused to reopen the case.
In another letter from the Catholic Bishops of Texas, Mr Bush is asked to halt Barnes's execution and to "conduct a thorough examination of the system by which condemned persons in Texas are executed".
The bishops point out that, in the past, seven out of 85 people on death row in Texas were wrongly convicted and set free.
"It is essential that if the state is going to impose the ultimate punishment there be no margin of error," the bishops said in their letter.
On Wednesday Mr Jack Lang, president of France's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, asked Texan authorities to spare Barnes's life.
Also on Wednesday, President Clinton said he was opposed to any suspension or moratorium on executions of criminals sentenced to death by US federal courts.
On the federal level, he noted, there was a review being carried out into the "racial implications" of death sentences, and guidelines were being drawn up on how death row inmates should present clemency requests, "which obviously would give people an opportunity to raise the question of whether there was some doubt about their guilt or innocence".