A Nigerian Catholic archbishop voluntarily offered...

A Nigerian Catholic archbishop voluntarily offered to die in place of a Muslim woman condemned to death by stoning by an Islamic court for the crime of adultery.
Dr Anthony Olubunmi Okogie, the Catholic archbishop of the Lagos Archdiocese in south-western Nigeria, offered to pay the sentence recently imposed on Safiya Hussaini Tungar-tudu in the northern state of Sokoto. The case has created an international outcry.
In a statement released to the news media, Okogie explained that he decided to make the offer as a protest of the Nigerian Catholic Church against the Islamic Sharia legal system.
The archbishop accused the system of deliberately persecuting Christians and the poor of northern Nigeria. He called on religious leaders vested with responsibility for administering and interpreting the Islamic legal code to do so in the fear of God and with humility, taking human considerations into account.
The archbishop warned the nation's political leaders that unless checked, policies in certain Nigerian states could isolate the entire nation from the international community.