ROME (NEWSnet/AP) — A Vatican-affiliated Catholic charity made an appeal Tuesday to the state of Alabama to halt a planned execution using nitrogen gas, saying the method is “barbarous" and “uncivilized” and would bring “indelible shame” to the state.

Rome-based Sant’Egidio Community has lobbied for decades to abolish the death penalty. It has turned attention to the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, scheduled for Jan. 25, in what would be the first U.S. execution using nitrogen hypoxia.

Unless stopped by courts, Smith will be put to death for the 1988 murder-for-hire of a preacher’s wife. In legal filings, the state said Smith will wear a gas mask and that breathable air will be replaced with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen.

“In many respects, Alabama seems to have the awful ambition of setting a new, downward standard of humanity in the already questionable and barbaric world of capital executions,” said Mario Marazziti, in charge of Sant’Egidio’s death penalty abolition group. “We are asking that this execution be stopped, because the world cannot afford to regress to the stage of killing in a more barbaric way.”

A petition from Sant’Egidio urging Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to grant Smith clemency has been signed by 15,000 people, officials told reporters.

Last week, the Alabama attorney general told federal appeals court judges that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.”

According to Amnesty International, 112 countries have abolished the death penalty, while others have issued a moratorium or don't practice it.

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