The U.S. has six executions scheduled over the next nine days

During his visit to the United States last week, Pope Francis used an address before Congress — one of the most high-profile platforms from which the pope could speak to this country and its leaders — to call for an end to the death penalty. In the two weeks following the pope’s remarks, five states plan to execute six death-row inmates, a burst of lethal activity the country has not seen in more than two years. The states planning the executions this week and next — Georgia, Oklahoma, Virginia, Texas and Missouri — are among the country’s most active death-penalty states since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976.