SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - South Dakota religious leaders are speaking out against the death penalty as the state prepares for its first modern-day execution.

Elijah Page, 24, is scheduled to die by lethal injection next week in the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Page and two others beat, tortured and killed Chester Poage of Spearfish in 2000.

The Rev. Blase Cupich, bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Rapid City, said capital punishment is wrong and he has called on Gov. Mike Rounds to commute Page's sentence to life imprisonment.

Rounds, a Catholic, has said he does not plan to intervene.

Cupich said protecting the lives of those considered the least worthy of dignity "sends a strong message about the dignity of everyone's life."

"We don't teach that killing is wrong by killing," Cupich said Monday.

Bishop Deborah Lieder Kiesey, who leads the Dakotas Conference of the United Methodist Church, said Christians can sometimes get stuck in the Old Testament "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" attitude. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ calls for forgiveness and his teachings help people better understand what God is trying to explain, she said.

"We believe that all people are redeemable, and the death penalty - capital punishment - takes away the possibility of transformation, repentance and turning one's life around," Kiesey said.

South Dakota had the death penalty when it became a state in 1889 but abolished it in 1915. Capital punishment was reinstated in 1939 but abolished again from 1977 to 1979 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled existing death penalty laws unconstitutional. The current death penalty statute has been in place since 1979.

Michael Paranzino, president of Maryland-based Throw Away the Key, which supports capital punishment, said Poage's killing is a heinous crime that deserves the ultimate punishment.

"This case cries out for the death penalty," he said.

Paranzino, who is Catholic, said not all in his faith agree with American bishops' views on the death penalty.

He said execution laws eliminate the risk of killers killing again, and they send a signal that a state is willing to use its full power to vindicate a life taken in cold blood. Abolishing the death penalty also destroys incentives for killers to plead guilty and testify against co-conspirators, he said.

Paranzino said no penalty can bring back the victim, but an execution can bring a victim's family some measure of peace just knowing that the killer of their loved one is not sitting in prison watching cable television.

Cupich disagreed. The bishop said only forgiveness, as hard as it may be and as long as it may take, can bring true peace and allow a victim's family to move on.

"There is something very liberating in forgiving," he said.

Page, of Athens, Texas, asked Circuit Judge Warren Johnson for permission to fire his lawyer, end his appeals and be put to death. Johnson earlier this month ruled Page was of sound mind and that the execution could be held as scheduled.

Cupich said those who have visited Page recently say he's sad and depressed, and the bishop believes people are being seduced into helping Page commit suicide. He said Page should be afforded protection like any other at-risk person with a death wish.

Both Kiesey and Cupich said criminals must be punished for their crimes, but they don't believe the death penalty is the answer.

"I don't believe we need to encourage the continuation of the cycle of violence," Kiesey said.