By MEAD GRUVER, HOLLY MEYER and HANNAH SCHOENBAUM, Associated Press

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Dallin H. Oaks, a former Utah Supreme Court justice known for his jurist sensibilities and traditionalist convictions on marriage and religious freedom, is expected to be the next president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its more than 17 million members worldwide.

The leadership transition follows the recent death of President Russell M. Nelson and comes as many of the church’s U.S. members are reeling from a deadly attack on a Michigan congregation and a high-profile assassination in Utah where the denomination known widely as the Mormon church is headquartered.

Oaks is the longest-tenured member of a top body of leaders called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. That makes him next in line to be president under a tradition established more than a century ago to ensure a smooth handover and prevent any lobbying internally or publicly. The formal announcement likely will come at some point after Nelson’s funeral on Oct. 7. He was 101 when he died Saturday.

At 93, Oaks will be among the oldest presidents. Seven of the past nine have served into their nineties, including five beyond Oaks’ current age.

An open church confronts violence

For a faith that prioritizes being welcoming — especially at local churches on Sundays — last weekend’s attack on a worship service in Michigan was shocking.

Services in Grand Blanc Township had just started when a former Marine rammed his pickup truck into the church and started shooting. Four people died and eight were wounded in Sunday’s attack about 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of Detroit. The attacker lit a fire before being chased and killed in an exchange of gunfire with police.

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“We all seek answers and understanding in the wake of trauma, shock, and grief. We are grateful to all who are reaching out with service, prayers, and words of support during this difficult time,” Oaks said in a statement that also paid tribute to Nelson.

Nelson’s “timeless teachings” help people find comfort amid suffering, Oaks said.

Utah is also still reeling from the Sept. 10 shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University. His alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, grew up as a church member.

Violence could be a talking point this weekend at the church’s twice-annual general conference in Salt Lake City, said Matthew Bowman, a Claremont Graduate University professor specializing in U.S. religious history. Church leaders often address major issues of the moment while leaving some room for the nearly 100,000 in-person attendees and many more watching remotely to interpret religious doctrine for themselves.

Church policy allows only law enforcement officers to bring guns and other lethal weapons on church property. It’s unclear whether new measures are coming.

Experts skeptical an Oaks presidency will bring major change

A longtime prominent voice in the church, Oaks joined the Quorum of the Twelve in 1984 around the same time as Nelson.

When Nelson became president, he elevated Oaks to the First Presidency, the top governing body.

“I suspect that Oaks has had a fairly strong hand in leadership through Nelson’s presidency,” Bowman said. “I think we’re not going to see a very tremendous pivot.”

Early on as an apostle, Oaks was involved in a crackdown on far-right extremism that resulted in some excommunications. In 2020, he gave a speech about having faith in elections without resorting to radicalism or violence.

Whereas Nelson focused on the faith’s global footprint, including picking apostles with international and immigrant backgrounds, Oaks may refocus on the U.S. and its politics, Bowman said.

With Nelson’s death, there is a vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve that Oaks would fill as president — one way church presidents can leave their imprint. Some wonder if he will tap the church’s commissioner of education, Clark Gilbert, who has led efforts at the church-owned Brigham Young University campuses to enforce church orthodoxy, Bowman said.

An Oaks presidency creates anxiety for LGBTQ+ members and allies

Oaks has been a driving force against same-sex marriage and in upholding a teaching that homosexuality is a sin, creating anxiety and concern among the faithful who are gay, lesbian and transgender.

He often delivered speeches reinforcing the faith’s stance, including one in which he said the intended meaning of “gender” in church doctrine is “biological sex at birth.” Church policies introduced in 2024 significantly restricted involvement of members who have transitioned physically or socially, such as changing their name or pronouns.

Some remember surveillance of and a crackdown on gay students Brigham Young University while Oaks was school president in the 1970s. A church spokesman acknowledged in 1979 that BYU security had staked out gay bars but said Oaks put a stop to the practice when he found out about it.

Yet in recent years Oaks has been part of a few key church moves that suggest he might not make the topic a centerpiece of his administration, experts say.

Oaks was Nelson’s closest adviser in 2019 when Nelson rescinded a policy that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and labeled same-sex couples as sinners eligible for expulsion. The move reversed a decision that was devastating and confusing to gay and lesbian church members who had been buoyed in previous years by church leaders’ calls for more love and understanding for LGBTQ+ members.

“It would be really unlikely that he would, you know, go back on that when he was one of the decision-makers in removing that restriction,” said Paul Reeve, Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah.

Oaks also helped the church strike a compromise in 2022 in which the faith backed proposed federal legislation to safeguard same-sex marriages so long as those laws didn’t infringe upon religious liberty or force the faith to perform same-sex marriages or grant them official church sanction.

Noah Hanson, who is gay and grew up in the religion, worries Oaks’ ascension will drive a greater wedge between LGBTQ+ people and their devout family members. Under Nelson, the church largely backed off talking about homosexuality, Hanson said, giving his parents the space to “make a little progress.”

“They’ve started telling my husband that they love him,” said the 27-year-old from Logan, Utah.

If Oaks is as outspoken about LGBTQ+ people as he has been in the past, Hanson worries that progress will slip. His parents revere church presidents, who are considered prophets by members, even if their policies are harmful to their own children, he said.

“If Dallin H. Oaks doesn’t soften his stances on how marriage is only between a man and a woman, or that the act of homosexuality is a sin, like if he lays down that hammer, I feel like that’s gonna ruin my relationship with my parents,” Hanson said.

Oaks’ presidency could be stylistically different

Well known for dry sermons and speeches that appeal more to reason than emotion, Oaks brings a jurist’s sensibility to his work. Compared to Nelson’s sentimentalism, Oaks is cooler, more precise and lawyerly, Bowman said.

Becoming president, though, could inspire him to adopt a more personal approach, suggested Patrick Mason, a religious studies and history professor at Utah State University.

“It’s a very different thing to be president of the church and to recognize that now you are meant to be all things to all people within the church,” Mason said.

Oaks has been outspoken about maintaining civil public discourse, urging people shortly before the 2024 presidential election to “avoid what is harsh and hateful” and be peacemakers in their communities.

Following anti-vaccine backlash from church members after celebrating the COVID-19 vaccines on social media, Nelson and Oaks began talking more about the need for moderation, political dialogue and avoiding conspiracy theories and hate.

“That really, I think, alarmed Nelson, and it alarmed Oaks,” Bowman said. “I think this is back on Oaks’ radar, that political extremism in the church is a problem. And he may be, I think because of his training and because of his background, perhaps more willing than Nelson was to take concrete steps.”

Gruver reported from Fort Collins, Colorado, and Meyer from Nashville. AP corporate archivist Sarit Hand in New York City contributed to this report.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By RENATA BRITO

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Activists on board a flotilla of vessels sailing toward Gaza said they were prepared for the Israeli navy to intervene as they approached the besieged Palestinian territory on Wednesday, after a tense night in the Mediterranean Sea.

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The Global Sumud Flotilla, with Greta Thunberg, Nelson Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, and several European lawmakers aboard, consists of nearly 50 boats and 500 activists and is carrying a symbolic amount of humanitarian aid. It has remained undeterred in its mission to break the Israeli blockade of the coastal strip and reach Palestinians.

“Every minute we advance a little more,” Thiago Ávila, one of the flotilla leaders and spokespeople, told reporters Wednesday in an online news conference from aboard the Alma, one of the flotilla’s motherships.

The vessels were sailing in international waters north of Egypt on Wednesday afternoon and had entered what activists call a “danger zone,” which Israeli authorities had warned them not to cross and where the Israeli navy had stopped attempts by other flotillas in the past.

This map shows the location of the pro-Palestine activist flotilla as of October 1, plus two locations it has allegedly been targeted by drone attacks. (AP Digital Embed)

Overnight, the activists said two Israeli warships aggressively approached two of their boats, circling them and jamming their communications, including the live cameras on board.

“It was an intimidation act. They wanted us to see them,” said Lisi Proença, another activist who was on board the Sirius, a vessel that was targeted alongside the Alma.

After the close encounter overnight, the military vessels eventually left and the flotilla continued on its journey, broadcasting live cameras from many of its boats.

By Wednesday afternoon, the atmosphere appeared to be more relaxed on board the decks of some of the sailboats that broadcast their journeys live. Some activists held up messages of solidarity with people in Gaza and chanted “Free Palestine!” on camera. Music could be heard playing in the background.

If undisturbed, the flotilla, which began its journey from the Spanish port of Barcelona a month ago, was to reach the shores of Gaza by Thursday morning, the group said. However, activists said that was unlikely and that they were expecting Israeli authorities to try to stop them at any moment, as they have done in past attempts.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called the flotilla a provocation and warned them to stop and transfer their aid through other channels into Gaza. “It is not too late,” he posted on X.

The Italian fleet of the Global Sumud Flotilla departs from the port of Siracusa, Italy, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (Sebastiano Diamante/LaPresse via AP)

Israel’s government has accused some of the flotilla members of being linked to Hamas. Activists have strongly rejected the accusations and said Israel was trying to justify potential attacks on them.

European governments, including Spain and Italy, which had sent their navy ships to escort the flotilla during part of its journey, urged the activists to turn back and avoid confrontation. But while Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni said late Tuesday the flotilla’s actions risked undermining U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent proposal for resolving the war in Gaza, Spain’s prime minister defended them.

“We must remember it is a humanitarian mission that wouldn’t be taking place if the Israeli government had allowed for the entry of aid,” Pedro Sánchez told reporters on Wednesday. Spaniards taking part would benefit from full diplomatic protection, he added.

“They present no threat nor danger to Israel,” he said.

By JOEAL CALUPITAN and AARON FAVILA

BOGO, Philippines (AP) — Rescuers used backhoes and sniffer dogs to look for survivors in collapsed houses and other damaged buildings in the central Philippines on Wednesday, a day after an earthquake killed at least 69 people and injured more than 200 others.

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The death toll was expected to rise from the 6.9 magnitude quake that hit at about 10 p.m. on Tuesday and trapped an unspecified number of residents in the hard-hit city of Bogo and outlying rural towns in Cebu province.

Sporadic rain and damaged bridges and roads have hampered the race to save lives, officials said.

A dangerous quake

On Wednesday night, rescuers in orange and yellow hard hats used spotlights, a backhoe and bare hands to sift through the rubble of concrete slabs, broken wood and twisted iron bars for hours in a collapsed building in Bogo city. No survivor was found.

“We’re still in the golden hour of our search and rescue,” Office of Civil Defense deputy administrator Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV said in a morning news briefing in Manila, the country’s capital. “There are still many reports of people who were pinned or hit by debris.”

The epicenter of the earthquake, which was set off by movement in an undersea fault line at a dangerously shallow depth of 3 miles, was about 12 miles northeast of Bogo, a coastal city of about 90,000 people in Cebu province where about half of the deaths were reported, officials said.

Rescuers search for survivors underneath rubble in Bogo, Philippines, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

The Philippine government is considering whether to seek help from foreign governments based on an ongoing rapid damage assessment, Alejandro said.

The United States, Japan, Australia and the European Union expressed condolences.

“We stand ready to support the Philippine government’s response as friends, partners, allies,” MaryKay Carlson, U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, said in a post on social media platform X.

A desperate search

Workers were trying to transport a backhoe to hasten search and rescue efforts in a cluster of shanties in a mountain village hit by a landslide and boulders, Bogo city disaster-mitigation officer Rex Ygot told The Associated Press early Wednesday.

“It’s hard to move in the area because there are hazards,” said Glenn Ursal, another disaster mitigation officer, who added that some survivors were brought to a hospital from the mountain village.

Deaths also were reported from the outlying towns of Medellin and San Remigio, where three coast guard personnel, a firefighter and a child were killed separately by collapsing walls and falling debris while trying to flee to safety from a basketball game in a sports complex that was disrupted by the quake, town officials said.

The earthquake was one of the most powerful to batter the central region in more than a decade and it struck while many people slept or were at home.

A traumatized region

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology briefly issued a tsunami warning and advised people to stay away from the coastlines of Cebu and the nearby provinces of Leyte and Biliran due to possible waves of up to 3 feet.

No such waves were reported and the tsunami warning was lifted more than three hours later, but thousands of traumatized residents refused to return home and chose to stay in open grassy fields and parks overnight despite intermittent rains.

Cebu and other provinces were still recovering from a tropical storm that battered the central region on Friday, leaving at least 27 people dead mostly due to drownings and falling trees, knocking out power in entire cities and towns and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

Schools and government offices were closed in the quake-hit cities and towns while the safety of buildings were checked. More than 600 aftershocks have been detected after Tuesday night’s temblor, Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology director Teresito Bacolcol said.

Rain-soaked mountainsides were more susceptible to land- and mudslides in a major earthquake, he warned.

“This was really traumatic to people. They’ve been lashed by a storm then jolted by an earthquake,” Bacolcol said. “I don’t want to experience what they’ve gone through.”

The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean. The archipelago is also lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms each year.

Associated Press journalist Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Pope Leo XIV has intervened for the first time in an abortion dispute roiling the U.S. Catholic Church by raising the seeming contradiction over what it really means to be “pro-life.”

Leo, a Chicago native, was asked late Tuesday about plans by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich to give a lifetime achievement award to Illinois Senator Dick Durbin for his work helping immigrants. The plans drew objection from some conservative U.S. bishops given the powerful Democratic senator’s support for abortion rights.

Leo called first of all for respect for both sides, but he also pointed out the seeming contradiction in such debates.

“Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion but says I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” Leo said. “Someone who says that ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

Leo spoke hours before Cupich announced that Durbin had declined the award.

Church teaching forbids abortion but it also opposes capital punishment as “inadmissible” under all circumstances. U.S. bishops and the Vatican have strongly called for humane treatment of migrants, citing the Biblical command to “welcome the stranger.”

Pope Leo says mutual respect is needed

Leo said he wasn’t familiar with the details of the dispute over the Durbin award, but said it was nevertheless important to look at the senator’s overall record and noted Durbin’s four-decade tenure. Responding to a question in English from the U.S. Catholic broadcaster EWTN News, he said there were many ethical issues that constitute the teaching of the Catholic Church.

“I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them but I would ask first and foremost that there be greater respect for one another and that we search together both as human beings, in that case as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois, as well as Catholics to say we need to you know really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward in this church. Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear,” he said.

Cupich was a close adviser to Pope Francis, who strongly upheld church teaching opposing abortion but also criticized the politicizing of the abortion debate by U.S. bishops. Some bishops had called for denying Communion to Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights, including former President Joe Biden.

Biden met on several occasions with Francis and told reporters in 2021 that Francis had told him to continue receiving Communion. During a visit to Rome that year he received the sacrament during Mass at a church in Francis’ diocese.

Durbin was barred from receiving Communion in his home diocese of Springfield in 2004. Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki has continued the prohibition and was one of the U.S. bishops who strongly objected to Cupich’s decision to honor the senator. Cupich claims Durbin as a member of the Chicago Archdiocese, where Durbin also has a home.

Senator Durbin declines his award

In his statement announcing that Durbin would decline the award, Cupich lamented that the polarization in the U.S. has created a situation where U.S. Catholics “find themselves politically homeless” since neither the Republican nor the Democratic party fully encapsulates the breadth of Catholic teaching.

He defended honoring Durbin for his pro-immigration stance, and said the planned Nov. 3 award ceremony could have been an occasion to engage him and other political leaders with the hope of pressing the church’s view on other issues, including abortion.

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“It could be an invitation to Catholics who tirelessly promote the dignity of the unborn, the elderly, and the sick to extend the circle of protection to immigrants facing in this present moment an existential threat to their lives and the lives of their families,” Cupich wrote.

Paprocki, for his part, thanked Durbin for declining the award. “I ask that all Catholics continue to pray for our church, our country, and for the human dignity of all people to be respected in all stages of life including the unborn and immigrants,” Paprocki said in a Facebook post.

The dispute came as President Donald Trump’s administration maintains a surge of immigration enforcement in the Chicago area.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.