Hi!
Phew, that was a long ago, so maybe I'm missing something here... but mostly Church in the game is all about "sacrifices". So if you send people to jail or execute them, they would be satisfied. If you found a "bad" one, they will be satisfied even more.
From my memory, pleasing People is a more difficult task, as they want justice. That's why it's not reasonable to execute everyone but think of other means too, depending on people's sins (even if they sound stupid).
Hope that could help. And thanks for playing, by the way!