June 7, 2022

A daily news briefing from Catholic News Agency, powered by artificial intelligence. Ask your smart speaker to play “Catholic News,” or listen every morning wherever you get podcasts. www.catholicnewsagency.com - Pope Francis has expressed his “spiritual closeness” to Nigerian Catholics mourning the victims of a massacre at a church on Pentecost Sunday. In the June 5 attack, unidentified gunmen opened fire on Catholic worshipers attending Pentecost celebrations at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, in southwestern Nigeria. Initial reports suggested that more than 50 people were killed, including children, and others injured. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251467/nigeria-church-massacre-pope-francis-mourns-victims-of-unspeakable-violence In response to a federal court decision affirming the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s death penalty protocol, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City on Monday called on state lawmakers to end the death penalty. A US District judge had ruled against 28 Oklahoma death row inmates’ argument that one of the drugs the state uses in its lethal injection protocol, the sedative midazolam, is an insufficient painkiller which makes the dying process severely and unconstitutionally painful. “No matter the decision of the court on Oklahoma’s protocol, the use of the death penalty only contributes to the continued coarsening of society and to the spiral of violence,” Coakley said in a statement. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251468/okc-archbishop-calls-for-end-to-death-penalty-in-state-amid-court-decision-affirming-its-constitutionality Two Catholic priests martyred under the Ottoman Empire were beatified in Lebanon over the weekend. Father Leonard Melki and Father Thomas Saleh were Capuchin friars and missionaries in what is now Turkey who were arrested, tortured, and martyred by the forces of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and 1917 respectively. Melki was given a choice: convert to Islam and be freed, or die as a Christian. Refusing to apostatize