What happened
Japan's longtime ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its governing partner, Komeito, lost their majority in the lower house of parliament in snap elections yesterday, striking a blow to new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. The LDP coalition won about 215 seats in the 465-seat House of Representatives, down from 279 seats and far short of the 233 needed for a majority. The LDP still corralled a plurality of seats, but opposition parties, led by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), won 235 seats.

Who said what
"The results so far have been extremely severe, and we take them very seriously," Ishiba said. His decision to call elections right after being chosen as party leader was a "political gamble," Shaimaa Khalil said at the BBC, "and it backfired." Ishiba has seen his popularity plummet as he dropped bold campaign promises and failed to clean up the party's tarnished image.

The results were a "punishment by voters' outrage over the governing party’s extensive financial scandals," but a "change of government is not expected," The Associated Press said. CDP leader Yoshihiko Noda said he will try to lead a coalition government, but the most likely scenario is a weakened LDP-led coalition including the centrist Democratic Party for the People or the conservative Japan Innovation Party.

What next?
Japan is "heading for a time of political instability," Shimada Yukiko said on Japan's public broadcaster NHK. The first question is whether Ishiba "will survive as prime minister," The New York Times said. If he does not, Japan "might return to the kind of revolving-door leadership" of years past. And "we don't want such trouble again," said Tsuneo Watanabe at Tokyo's Sasakawa Peace Foundation.

What happened
Pope Francis on Saturday approved the final document of his yearslong global synod on synodality, or dialogue among the world's 1.4 billion Catholics on the direction of the church. He took the unusual step of saying it speaks for the church, requiring no additional action by him.

Who said what
The final document, approved by 368 delegates after three years of discussion "at every level of the Catholic Church," laid out a "vision for structural reform" that would give "lay leaders, especially women," a greater role and more equal voice in the church, Religion News Service said. The bishops, nuns and laypeople affirmed "there is no reason or impediment that should prevent women from carrying out leadership roles in the church," but the final document ruled out ordaining women as priests and said the question of women deacons "remains open."

Catholic deacons can preside over baptisms, weddings and funerals, but only priests can celebrate mass. Ordaining women deacons was a "fringe proposal pushed by Western progressives" before the synod, The Associated Press said. By the end it had become "something of a litmus test of how far the church was going to go" to include women in leadership roles.

Progressive Catholics "may be disappointed" in the outcome, "but some conservatives were upset about the whole summit from the beginning," the BBC said, "opposed to opening up this consultation process," traditionally reserved for bishops, to lay Catholics.

What next?
The question of women deacons was relegated to a Vatican study group, CNN said, but "for a church which thinks in centuries, what may seem like small steps to those on the outside are major leaps forward for many inside."