What happened

President Donald Trump on Monday deleted from his social media account an apparently AI-generated image showing him dressed like Jesus and healing a man with orbs of light in his hands amid a panoply of religious and patriotic imagery. Following sharp condemnation, including from conservative Christian supporters, Trump told reporters he had posted the image but “thought it was me as a doctor,” and “only the fake news” would claim he was depicting himself as Jesus.

Who said what

The post’s removal was a “rare retreat” for Trump, who as a rule “does not apologize for doing and saying things that hurt or offend people,” The New York Times said. But the “image depicting himself as a Christ-like figure sparked outrage on the religious right,” angering a group that has “rallied behind Trump” through “two impeachments and three elections,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The image was “OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy,” and Trump needed to “ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God,” Megan Basham, an evangelical Christian writer at The Daily Wire, said on X. Conservative Christian commentator Rod Dreher told the Journal that Trump is “radiating the spirit of Antichrist, no question.”

What next?

The “consternation over Trump’s social-media posts,” including his “pointed criticism of Pope Leo XIV,” could “turn into a political liability for Republicans,” the Journal said. Catholics “are America’s largest swing religious vote,” Axios said, “and Trump’s support among them was already sliding” before his posts.

The divide between the American president and the American pontiff has exploded into view. Pope Leo has repeatedly rebuked President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and war in Iran, and Trump is now returning the criticism. Could the division prefigure a split in the Catholic Church?

Leo on Sunday delivered his “strongest condemnation yet” of war in a peace vigil at St. Peter’s Basilica, said CBS News. “Enough with war!” he said during the public service. Real strength is “manifested in serving life.” The president did not take kindly to the critique. Leo is “terrible for foreign policy” and should “get his act together as pope, use common sense, stop catering to the radical left,” Trump said on Truth Social.

The exchange followed a “bitter lecture” during a January meeting between Pentagon appointees and a Vatican diplomat, said The Free Press. The message from Defense Department officials: The church “had better take its side” on the world stage. One unnamed U.S. official “went so far as to invoke the Avignon Papacy,” the 14th-century period in which the French monarchy forcibly moved the papacy from Rome to France. Both sides downplayed the Free Press report. Even so, tension between Catholic leaders and the White House has “only risen since the start of the war with Iran,” said The Atlantic.

What did the commentators say?

“There will be no second Avignon,” Christopher Hale said at the newsletter Letters from Leo. Officials invoking that 14th-century history were making a “threat against the conscience of the world,” but the White House will be unable to repeat it.

A recent favorability survey published by NBC News found Leo finished first in a ranking of “14 public figures, institutions and political groups” by a wide margin. That makes him the “most popular public figure on earth.” Trump cannot compete. “The American people stand with Pope Leo XIV.”

Leo has “resisted Trump like a protester at a ‘No Kings’ rally,” said Gustavo Arellano at the Los Angeles Times. Critics will accuse the pope of “Trump derangement syndrome” and note that he stands “athwart the desires” of the 55% of Catholics who voted for the president in 2024. But Trump’s administration has pulled funding from Catholic charities and criticized bishops who dissent. Leo’s role is to “bear witness to the words of Christ,” who spoke more about caring for the poor than waging war. Unlike Trump, Leo “urges us to stand for something other than ourselves.”

What next?

The debate over the war is spilling into the wider religious sphere, “driving a wedge” between the president’s pro-Israel evangelical supporters and the Catholic commentators who are “increasingly hostile to Trump’s foreign policy agenda,” said Vox. The “Avignon-gate” report will continue to raise tensions “within the U.S. Catholic community and within the MAGA movement.”

Leo, meanwhile, will not return to the U.S. for the country’s 250th birthday celebrations in July, choosing instead to minister to migrants in Italy. Leo’s priority is to “be with those who are downcast and marginalized,” said Cardinal Blase Cupich on “60 Minutes.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Sunday sharply criticized Pope Leo XIV, an increasingly vocal opponent of his Iran war. The first U.S.-born Catholic pontiff is “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” and “thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump said on social media. “I’m not a fan of Pope Leo,” he told reporters. “He’s a very liberal person.” Shortly afterward, Trump posted an AI-generated image “depicting himself as a Christ-like figure healing a sick person with American flags and eagles in the background,” CNN said.

Who said what

Trump’s “angry counterpunch to the soft-spoken Leo” starkly “illustrated how differently two of the world’s most powerful Americans handle conflict,” The New York Times said. Trump’s broadside came after the pope held a vigil for peace at the Vatican on Saturday and suggested that a “delusion of omnipotence” was fueling the war. “Enough of the idolatry of self and money!” Leo said. “Enough of war!”

It’s “not unusual for popes and presidents to be at cross purposes,” The Associated Press said, but it’s “exceedingly rare” for them to openly criticize each other. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement he was “disheartened” at Trump’s “disparaging words about the Holy Father.”

What next?

Trump’s “extraordinary public criticism” of the pope could put him “at odds with some Catholics, tens of millions of whom live in the U.S.,” The Wall Street Journal said. Pope Leo leaves Monday for a four-country tour of Africa, Catholicism’s fastest-growing region.

Polling and surveys have for years documented a decline in the number of Americans who attend church. But Catholic parishes across the country say they are seeing a dramatic uptick in the number of young men attending their services, raising the question of whether a revival is at hand.

“Standing-room only” Easter Sunday services appeared to signal a “turnaround from years of decline,” said CBS News. The Archdiocese of Boston says it has seen 700 new converts in recent years, with young adults “driving the surge.” Young people seem “open to the call of the Lord,” said Boston Archbishop Richard Henning to the outlet. Much coverage suggests the wave is “driven primarily by young men,” said Religion News Service: One California parish, for example, reported 38 men among 56 recent converts. Other data indicates the “pattern varies substantially by region and parish.”

Catholicism is “drawing in Gen Z men” seeking “truth, beauty and, yes, girlfriends,” said The Washington Post. Young men are “turning back to God,” said influencer Anthony Gross. This is “absolutely” a “phenomenon,” said David Gibson, the director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture, to the outlet. One study, however, reported that 12 young people have left the church for every new convert coming in. The influx of “theobros” amid such an exodus “changes the nature” of the church experience.

What did the commentators say?

Talk of a revival “seems unfounded,” Luis Parrales said at The Atlantic. Young Americans are the “least religious age group by many metrics,” more likely to express doubts about the existence of God and less likely to attend religious services or to have been raised in a faith tradition. The surge in young converts may be real and might spur a renewed “interest in contemplation and conversation” within a parish, but doubling their numbers will not “stave off broader generational trends.” If current trends persist, “American society will only secularize further.”

It is “entirely possible for a faith to experience revival and decline simultaneously,” Ross Douthat said at The New York Times. A “convert mentality” matters less to the growth or decline of a “big religion” than whether adherents have kids and transmit faith to them. “True enthusiasm” is probably better for the church than “dull religious habit.” There are indications, though, that religious renewal is taking place mostly in elite and upper-middle-class circles. A flowering of faith that leaves behind the poor and disaffected “would be a revival unworthy of the name.”

What next?

Despite “near-record” numbers of converts, there is no “conclusive statistical answer” to the question of a U.S. Catholic revival, said the National Catholic Register. While the “vibes have shifted a little bit” in recent years, there are few indications Americans “moved toward a ‘Yay Jesus’ stage,” said religion researcher Ryan Burge to the outlet. Others say the revival shows up outside the official reports. “I go to Mass every day, and I see there are more people in the pews,” said the the University of Chicago’s Rubén Rodríguez Barron to the National Catholic Register.

What happened

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday celebrated his first Easter as pontiff by urging leaders “who have the power to unleash wars” to instead “choose peace!” President Donald Trump invoked God in obscenity-laced social media posts threatening to bomb all of Iran’s power plants and bridges unless it agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz by Monday evening. Indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets constitutes a war crime.

Who said what

“Time is running out — 48 hours before all Hell will reign down on them. Glory be to GOD!” Trump posted over the weekend. “Open the F--kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!” the president wrote, adding: “Praise be to Allah.” Trump’s post was “notable” for both its “vulgar language” and “somewhat desperate-sounding tone,” said The New York Times. It “would have stood out on any day, much less on what most Christians consider the holiest day of the year.”

The Vatican has become “alarmed” at the Trump administration’s “invocations of God” to “defend” the Iran war, The Washington Post said. Pope Leo has generally been “careful in his language,” leaving “more overt criticism” to U.S. bishops and “other senior proxies,” but he has “grown blunter in pushing back against suggestions that divine providence supports the use of force or violence.” In his traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing, Leo prayed that “those who have weapons lay them down” and choose a peace not “imposed by force” or the “desire to dominate others,” but through “dialogue.”

Some critics were more direct. Trump “is not a Christian,” former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a former Trump ally, said on social media over a screenshot of his Easter post. “Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness.”

What next?

Before Trump, no “other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes,” the Times said, and his “language and actions could have far-reaching consequences” for the U.S., Iran and the world. A “defiant Iran” responded to Trump’s threats by striking “infrastructure targets in neighboring Gulf Arab countries” and threatening to “restrict another heavily used waterway,” The Associated Press said.

What happened

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday began his first Holy Week as pope by criticizing leaders who invoke Jesus to “justify war.” Christians throughout the Middle East are “suffering the consequences of an atrocious conflict,” including not being able to “live fully the rites of these holy days,” he said at a Palm Sunday Mass at the Vatican. Hours earlier, Israeli police had blocked the top Catholic leader in Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, from celebrating Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, drawing widespread criticism from Western leaders and diplomats.

Who said what

“This is our God: Jesus, King of Peace,” the pope told tens of thousands gathered in St Peter’s Square. “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’” Pope Leo is “known for choosing his words carefully,” Reuters said, and while he did “not specifically name any world leaders,” he has been “ramping up criticism of the Iran war.”

“Leaders on all sides of the Iran war have used religion to justify their actions,” but “especially Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,” The Associated Press said. The secretary’s “proselytizing Christian campaign” in the U.S. military has alarmed military, legal and religious experts, The Washington Post said, and the “war with Muslim-majority Iran has only made Hegseth’s approach more stark.” Last week at the Pentagon, Hegseth invoked the “mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ” in a prayer to inflict “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

What next?

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said in a statement that Israel’s “manifestly unreasonable” and “fundamentally flawed decision” to block Pizzaballa from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre marked the “first time in centuries” that Catholic prelates were prevented from celebrating Palm Sunday at the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified and buried before his Easter resurrection. Israeli authorities said all religious buildings in Jerusalem’s Old City, home to some of the most sacred Christian, Muslim and Jewish sites, have been closed amid Iranian missile threats, and Pizzaballa was turned back for his own safety.

But “as criticism poured in from close allies, top Israeli leaders went into damage-control mode,” The Times of Israel said. Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the police to give Pizzaballa “full and immediate access” so he can “hold services as he wishes” during Christianity’s holiest week.

Pope Leo XIV has said God ignores the prayers of those who wage war and have “hands full of blood”. In what appears to be a clear rebuke of Donald Trump’s administration, the US-born pontiff, celebrating Palm Sunday mass in St Peter’s Square, called for an immediate ceasefire to the “atrocious” conflict between Israel, the US and Iran, and said Jesus cannot be used to justify war.

Leo is “known for choosing his words carefully”; he “did not specifically name any world leaders” but he has “been ramping up criticism of the Iran war in recent weeks”, said Joshua McElwee in The Independent.

What did the commentators say?

“The papacy has always been political,” said Pete Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal. And now “some of the biggest challenges to its vision of society are coming from the US”. As the first American leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, Leo “brings a deeper understanding” of US society and politics than any previous pope, so “his critiques” can’t be as easily dismissed by US politicians. But he will also be well aware that “millions of American Catholics voted for Trump”.

In marked contrast to other senior Vatican figures – such as secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who said American strikes on Iran risked setting “the whole world ablaze” – the pope’s initial response to the war had been “a tempered call for peace”, said Anthony Faiola and Michelle Boorstein in The Washington Post. Until now, Leo was delicately “navigating a minefield” with the Trump administration. Pitched by the Vatican “as a unifier and bridge builder”, he was striving to remain “above the fray”, while his allies in the Holy See, and cardinals and bishops in the US, “more directly challenge the administration”.

The problem is, said George W. Bush’s former speechwriter, William McGurn, in The Wall Street Journal, that “the moral witness of the papacy” has been diminished by successive popes’ “blinkered position on war”. “The kind of rightly ordered world” Leo “desires can’t be built by armies alone – but can almost never be built without armies and without the threat of force.” Traditional Catholic teachings, “grounded in the reality of man’s fallen human nature”, have been traded for “functional pacificism” that “risks being dismissed even by sympathisers”.

What next?

The Vatican potentially has great sway over US policy: Catholics, including Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, hold senior positions in the US administration, and are well represented on the Supreme Court and among leading House Republicans.

But a “major rift” has opened up in the Christian coalition that elected Trump, said John Grosso in the National Catholic Reporter. “Traditionalist Catholics and evangelicals” are split over the Iran war and, more broadly, “over the role Israel plays in US foreign policy”. Leo’s most recent comments could be “a moment of reckoning for Catholics caught up in Maga”, Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of Pope Francis, told the paper. How do they “reconcile obedience to church authority with support for Trump”?

What happened

Pope Leo XIV last month accepted the resignation of Bishop Emanuel Shaleta, leader of the Chaldean Catholic community in San Diego, the Vatican announced Tuesday, a day after Shaleta pleaded not guilty to embezzling $270,000 from his parish. Shaleta was arrested at the San Diego airport last week and charged with 16 felony counts of money laundering and embezzlement. The pope on Tuesday also accepted the retirement of Iraqi Cardinal Louis Sako, patriarch of the roughly one million Chaldean Catholics worldwide, about half of whom live in the U.S.

Who said what

The Chaldean Catholic Church, based in Iraq, is one of 23 Eastern Rite churches in full communion with Rome. Sako, 76, said he resigned “of my own will” to pursue “prayer, writing and simple service.” It’s “unclear if his retirement is connected to Shaleta’s case,” The Associated Press said. Sako shepherded his “ancient church through the traumatic years” of ISIS persecution and is leaving as the Iran war “has spilled over into Iraq.” There are now only about 150,000 Christians in Iraq, down from 1.5 million when the U.S. invaded in 2003.

Shaleta had led the “small Chaldean Catholic community” of about 71,000 in San Diego since 2017, Reuters said. Prosecutor Joel Madero said a parishioner at St. Peter Chaldean Catholic Cathedral turned over documents showing possible embezzlement in 2024, and Shaleta “provided completely unreasonable tales of where that money was going.” The bishop said during a Mass last month that he had never “abused any penny of the church money.”

What next?

Pope Leo named Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop as temporary administrator of San Diego’s Chaldean diocese. Shaleta, who faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted, has a preliminary hearing scheduled for April 27.

The Tokyo High Court has upheld a decision to dissolve the Unification Church, a controversial religious organisation linked with the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. Tetsuya Yamagami, the convicted murderer who was sentenced to life in prison, cited Abe’s affiliation to the church as his primary motivation for the killing.

The church used “coercive tactics to solicit large donations” from its members, said The Japan Times. A lower court ruled last year it had “committed acts in violation of laws and regulations”, which were “significantly harming the public welfare”.

Forced compensation

There has been “intense societal focus on the rulings” due to the “scope of harm” the organisation has caused across the country. Under the Religious Corporations Act, the church will be forced to compensate those affected – around 1,500 people – with “damage fees totalling approximately ¥20.4 billion” (£97 million).

The church will also lose its title as a religious organisation, so it can continue only as a “voluntary organisation” and as such will lose tax benefits. Even if the church appeals the decision to the Supreme Court, the liquidation process can proceed immediately.

The Unification Church is a South Korean movement that has “exerted significant influence in Japan since the 1960s”, said The New Yorker. It was founded by Sun Myung Moon and followers are referred to as Moonies. They promote a “theological mix of Christian Messianism, Cold War anti-Communism, pro-natalism, and self-adulation”. Around the same time, Moon “befriended” Shinzo Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, “a war criminal who later served as prime minister” and head of the Liberal Democrats, Abe’s future party.

The church “boasted of having millions of members around the world”, ranging from “Brazil to Nigeria”; however, “this number was likely inflated”. By the 1990s, there were about 600,000 Unificationists in Japan, “twice as many as in Korea”, and today the organisation still has around 60,000 followers in Japan. As recently as 2017, the church’s annual fundraising goal in Japan was an “astounding” $200 million, according to a former official, though the church denies this.

‘Exploiting fears’

It was the “shock assassination” of Abe in 2022 that put the Unification Church under global scrutiny, said the BBC. Yamagami, who has appealed his sentence, “had held a grudge against the prime minister” because of his closeness to the organisation, “which had bankrupted his family”.

Investigators found that the church “coerced” followers into “buying expensive items” by “exploiting fears about their spiritual well-being”, and also revealed “close ties with many conservative lawmakers”.

Abe had appeared in a 2021 video expressing his “respect” for the church’s leader and wife of Moon, Han Hak-ja, said Nippon.com. The following year Abe was killed by Yamagami, who harboured a “deep-seated resentment” of the religious organisation, stemming from the “financial duress his family suffered” at its hands.

The “political connections” the church had “are just the tip of the iceberg” as many other issues “remain unresolved three and a half years after” Abe’s murder. “So much suffering could have been avoided had those in power in both Japan and South Korea not waited to act against the UC.”

To combat the “universal threat” of “cults” like the Unification Church, Japan should “draw on foreign legal frameworks like France’s anti-cult laws”. This is an “ongoing human rights crisis that can no longer be ignored”.

After more than 100 days on the road, a party of Buddhist monks have arrived in Washington, completing their 2,300-mile “walk for peace” across the United States.

The group, which set off from a temple near Fort Worth, Texas in late October, numbered around two dozen and included monks from Thailand, Vietnam, France, Burma and Sri Lanka. They have amassed more than five million followers across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok over the course of their journey, said Rolling Stone.

The monks plan to use their visit to the capital to petition for Vesak – the Buddha’s birthday – to be recognised as a national holiday, said the BBC. But they said on Dhammacetiya, their official website, that they were not marching with a political agenda or to “force peace upon the world, but to help nurture it, one awakened heart at a time”.

‘Hope and encouragement’

The journey has “not been easy”, said The New York Times. The southern states have experienced an “unusually harsh” winter. Faced with snow and ice, the walkers wore scarves and coats over their orange robes and those walking barefoot were forced to temporarily don boots. To make matters worse, before the group had even left Texas, a truck driver accidentally crashed into one of the support vehicles, which in turn struck two of the monks, one of whom was so severely injured he required a leg amputation.

Along the way, the monks ate and slept at temples, churches, universities and community centres, bedding down in sleeping bags on the floor or outdoors in tents. Two members of the group practised “dhutanga”, said The Guardian, a Buddhist form of asceticism in which devotees never lie down, even to sleep. Instead, they “sit down in a meditation position, and they meditate all night” to “replenish their energy”.

At every stage, crowds have “swarmed” around the monks, said The New York Times. These supporters have “transcended racial, religious, economic, educational and geographic lines”, sharing a common belief that the monks were providing “comfort”, “hope and encouragement” that “otherwise seemed to be in short supply” in a politically polarised nation.

Thousands of well-wishers followed the journey remotely via online trackers, while the monks’ dog, Aloka, whose name means “light” in Sanskrit, has “become a celebrity in his own right”, recognisable for the “heart-shaped mark on his forehead”.

End of the road

While “millions are finding hope in their journey”, said Rolling Stone, there has been “pushback” at multiple stages during the walk. Around “a dozen Christian protesters” have trailed the walkers, bearing signs reading “Jesus Saves” in opposition to what they see as “a religious movement, promoting Buddhism”.

And “although the monks’ walk is not a direct commentary on politics, it coincides with a sense of unease spreading across the country”, which has also generated some political resistance. In Georgia and South Carolina, protesters carried placards and megaphones, with some signs “resembling Maga flags”.

But the predominant response has been one of welcome, support and encouragement. “My hope is, when this walk ends, the people we met will continue practising mindfulness and find peace,” said the group’s leader, the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara.

Tuesday marked the final day of walking, taking the total number of days to 108, “a sacred number in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism”, said NPR. “It represents spiritual completion, cosmic order and the wholeness of existence.”

This won’t quite be the end of their journey, however. After a visit to the state capitol building in Annapolis, Maryland, the monks will take a bus back to Fort Worth, and then “will walk together again”, although this time only for six miles, to return to “the temple where their trip began”.

What happened

Sarah Mullally Wednesday was formally confirmed as the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury, making her the first woman to lead the Church of England. She also officially became the spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, a confederation of 42 Anglican provinces, some of which do not accept the ordination of woman priests. London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral was transformed into an ecclesiastical courtroom for her Confirmation of Election, a centuries-old legal ceremony set within a church service.

Who said what

“These are times of division and uncertainty for our fractured world,” Mullally said in a statement. “I pray that we will offer space to break bread together” and “pledge myself to this ministry of hospitality.” England’s former chief nursing officer, Mullally served as Bishop of London before the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, stepped down last January amid allegations he mishandled a prominent case of child sexual abuse.

Mullally’s new position “has been a notoriously difficult one in terms of holding together people with a broad range of theological viewpoints both at home and abroad,” the BBC said. The Church of England has allowed women priests since the 1990s and had female bishops since 2015, but male bishops can “continue to refuse to ordain women if they choose,” and Mullally “will now lead such bishops” in England. “It is fair to say that I have, both in my secular role as well as in the church, experienced misogyny at times,” she told reporters, pledging to help ensure the issue is “brought into the open.”

What next?

Mullally will begin her public ministry after her installation ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral on March 25.

The appointment of Sarah Mullally as the first female Archbishop of Canterbury is an “immense step”, said Alastair Bruce on Sky News. But as the Church of England takes a new direction, critics have “poured cold water” on recent surveys which claimed that younger people were more likely to be churchgoers than older generations, said Kaya Burgess in The Times.

Instead, experts have pointed to the fact that church attendances “across the major denominations” have “failed to recover fully from their pandemic slump”.

Why did people think there is a Christian revival?

For many, 2025 was the year where a “stirring of renewed spiritual interest became impossible to ignore, even among doubters”, said Ken Costa in The Telegraph.

The Quiet Revival, a report published by Bible Society in April 2025, kickstarted the belief that attendance for worship was rising, “busting the myth of church decline”. It claimed that “church attendance has risen by 50%” in the last six years, that there was “growth among young adults”, that churches in England and Wales were “more diverse”, and that churchgoers were “more likely to give to charity”.

The report was based on two YouGov polls from 2018 and 2024, recording that the number of people who attended church at least once a month rose from 8% in 2018 to 12% in 2024. The number of those aged 18 to 24 jumped from 4% to 16% in the same time frame, with a “notable rise” in the number of young men attending.

What are the problems with Christian revival surveys?

The narrative around a purported Christian resurgence “may be misleading”, said Conrad Hackett, associate director of research at Pew Research Center (PRC).

Surveys that imply Gen Z are more religious often canvass participants in “opt-in” panels, where people are “recruited” to take part, responding to website ads or email campaigns, he said on the company website. There is a much higher likelihood that opt-in surveys would contain “bogus respondents”, who, instead of answering honestly, answer with “the minimal effort required to complete surveys quickly and receive monetary rewards”, or an agenda to skew the survey’s results. Increasingly, large language models can be “easily programmed” to take part in opt-in surveys, which researchers describe as an “existential threat” to the validity of online opt-in surveys.

Data collected by the Church of England has “painted a more nuanced picture”, said Sir John Curtice of the National Centre for Social Research. According to the C of E, average adult weekly attendance increased by 4.5% in 2022/23, and all-age average Sunday attendance rose by 1.5% in 2023/24, this rise “was not sufficient” to reverse a 19% fall between 2019 and 2023 following the pandemic, “let alone suggest any reversal of the long-term decline in church attendance”, said Curtice. “Even the Bible Society report acknowledged that the apparent recent growth in attendance had occurred among Catholics and Pentecostalists rather than in the churches of England’s established church.”

A spokesperson for Bible Society told Christian Today that The Quiet Revival report was based on a “high-quality YouGov survey” which used a “tried and trusted methodology”. The team was “meticulous in controlling for bias in responses”, and that there was “no reason to think that ‘opt-in’ surveys are inherently unreliable”.

What does the new, random sampling, research say?

Surveys based on random samples show that “Christian identity and practice are not increasing among young adults in Britain”, said the PRC report. “The narrative of a religious revival in the UK appears to be receiving much more attention than data and commentary challenging this narrative.”

I’m “surprised” and “sceptical” at the claims of increased church attendance, particularly among young people, said David Voas, Emeritus Professor of Social Science, UCL on The Conversation. Bible Society, which published The Quiet Revival report, “haven’t engaged with the mountain of evidence, some of it very recent, pointing to religious decline”. While it does appear that church attendance has continued to “rebound from the lows of the Covid lockdown”, it still remains “substantially lower” than pre-pandemic levels.

Two major reports stand out. The Labour Force Survey in summer 2025, of around 50,000 individuals per quarter, showed that 28% of 18- to 34-year-olds identified as Christian, down from 37% from early 2018. “Throughout this period, older British adults consistently identified as Christian at higher levels than young adults,” said PRC.

Similarly, the annual British Social Attitudes survey of more than 3,000 randomly sourced participants, showed “no clear evidence of a Christian revival”, said PRC. In 18- to 34-year-olds, the number of churchgoers has still not surpassed pre-pandemic levels, with 6% in 2024, compared to 8% in 2018.

What happened

The University of Oklahoma has removed a graduate student after she gave a student a failing grade on a psychology paper that cited the Bible as proof that “belief in multiple genders” is “demonic.” A review determined that the instructor, Mel Cuth, was “arbitrary in the grading of this specific paper,” the university said Monday, and she “will no longer have instructional duties.”

Who said what

The junior psychology major who wrote the essay appealed her zero grade and filed a religious discrimination claim. “Her case became a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over academic freedom on college campuses” after the university suspended Cuth and struck the student’s failing grade, The Associated Press said. Conservative groups and commentators made it an “online cause, highlighting” the junior’s argument “she’d been punished for expressing conservative Christian views.”

The University of Oklahoma’s Graduate Student Senate called Cuth’s removal “reprehensible.” The failed essay, meant to discuss academic research on gender expression and bullying in middle school, included a “prayer” that America’s youth “would not believe the lies being spread from Satan” about multiple genders. Cuth responded that the paper “does not answer the questions for the assignment,” relies on “personal ideology” and “is at times offensive,” though “I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs,” according to a screenshot posted online by the school’s Turning Point USA chapter.

What next?

Cuth said through a lawyer yesterday she was “considering all of her legal remedies, including appealing this decision.”

They say God is always with you, and now that includes in your pocket. From chatbot Jesus to AI-written sermons, churches are using the technology to try to get more people engaged with religion. AI could improve access and allow pastors more freedom for hands-on work, but it may not be effective in drawing in the masses.

Mass media

Churches are enlisting the help of AI to “stay relevant in the face of shrinking staff, empty pews and growing online audiences,” said Axios. The degree of use varies from place to place, with some places simply employing the tools in “mundane ways” like to “answer frequently asked questions such as service times and event details” or “feeding congregation attendance data into AI software to help them tailor outreach and communications.”

AI is also being used to convey otherworldly messages. The technology allows people the “feeling they are talking to a divine power, clergy member or deceased person,” said Axios. For example, the app Text With Jesus lets users chat with and ask questions of Jesus. The app quotes the Bible and seems to provide thoughtful responses. Still, with apps like these, “we have no idea what’s under the hood there, what’s really creating the reality that then they present,” said Robert P. Jones, a religious researcher, to Today.

Some pastors have said they use AI to draft sermons for their congregations. Many argue that “AI sermons not only draw on a wealth of sources, but also leave more time for pastoral care,” said Deena Prichep in NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday. The “goal of a sermon is basically to tell a story that can break open the hearts of people to a holy message. So does it matter where that comes from?” One church in Phoenix, Arizona, played an AI-generated message from Charlie Kirk from beyond the grave, in which he said that his “soul is secure in Christ.”

New blood

Denominations of Christianity are not the only religions that have integrated AI into their sermons or practices. There are also “Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Islamic chatbots, but some religions are more open to adopting new technologies than are others, and for different uses,” said Brian Owens at Nature.

Adults who are religiously unaffiliated, meaning they identify as atheists, agnostics or as “nothing in particular,” make up approximately 29% of the population, said Pew Research Center. But embracing AI technology could attract more people to religion. “Culture responds to that new technology and there are new standards or practices that emerge,“ said Brad Hill, the chief solutions officer of faith-based AI platform Gloo, to Christianity Today. “People who are in the business of flourishing and people who are trying to advance good need to be equipped with the very best tech so that they can apply it to that end.”

AI bots and other tools are “addressing an access problem,” said The New York Times. Many people have “longed for spiritual guidance, and have had to travel, sometimes great distances, to reach spiritual leaders.” Now, “chatbots are at a user’s fingertips.” However, using AI to spread religious messages “might not be as effective and convincing or inspirational” as “putting a person in the role of a religious authority,” said Owens.

The Spanish prime minister and a Catalan bishop are both fans of avant-garde singer Rosalía’s new album “Lux”, “perhaps surprisingly for an artist who sings an ode to the Berlin techno club Berghain”, said The Times.

Featuring an image of the Catalan singer adorned with a white nun’s veil and a rosary, the album exudes “religiosity”, despite its sometimes explicit lyrics. It is also part of a wider trend across Spain: a “growing return to the Catholic faith”.

What’s more, the new release “has already made Spotify history”, said Rolling Stone. With more than 42 million streams in just one day, “Lux” broke the platform’s record for a female Spanish-language artist. The magazine’s review said the album “sounds like absolutely nothing else in music right now”.

‘Fusion of faith, flamenco, and rock opera’

Rosalía fans think she is “somewhat of a saint, worthy of candlelit ‘altars’”, said The Times, and “Lux” has quickly become a smash hit. A “fusion of faith, flamenco, and rock opera”, with lyrics from 14 languages, it has “cemented Rosalía’s place among innovators in contemporary pop music”. The album includes collaborations with the likes Björk, Yves Tumor and Escolanía de Montserrat – a choir “regarded as the region’s beacon of Catholic faith”.

Ahead of the album’s release, Rosalía put on a “show of promotional power”, said El País. “In her handling of fan anticipation and the industry’s promotional wheel”, she bears some artistic resemblance to Madonna, another star who “came of age musically and produced her first masterpiece when she abandoned ‘the material world’ and embraced spirituality”.

“Lux” “seems to be making everything related to nuns trendy… even the wimple”. Rosalía “is neither the first nor the only celebrity to seek answers to the modern world within the walls of the convent”. But the album does coincide with many other signs that nuns are “making a comeback”.

Spain ‘is having a nun moment’

In pop culture, nuns are typically relegated to “the sadistic school teacher” or an “evil spirit”. But more recently “Instagram has been filled with accounts of young (and not so young) religious women” from all sorts of religious backgrounds who are “using social media to vindicate the role of nuns in modern life”.

Spain is “having a nun moment”, said The Times, and Rosalía’s “aesthetic leap from motorbikes to mysticism” has only amplified the nunmania (or monjamania). A celebrated film about modern life in the convent and a “cult podcast devoted to 16th-century nuns” gaining popularity at the same time prove the point.

Sociologists have also identified a “parallel revival of the Catholic faith” among those under 35. Though the number of those attending “regular Sunday worship” has stayed relatively low, young people are participating more and more in “faith-based festivals and retreats”.

The craze may just be a “seasonal spike”, but for now Spain – “long caught between its Catholic heritage and a secular present” – seems to be “enthralled” by all things nun.

The first American pope leads a church increasingly willing to express disapproval of America’s president. Pope Leo XIV and a few U.S. bishops have recently criticized President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration, with Leo saying “deep reflection” is needed about his home country’s treatment of migrants.

Leo’s recent comments were his “strongest criticism of Trump yet,” said the BBC. Scripture asks, “how did you receive the foreigner, did you receive him and welcome him, or not?” Leo said to journalists. The pope was “obviously talking about the ICE round-ups,” said Catholic historian Austen Ivereigh. Immigration is not an abstract issue for the church. “Many people targeted in the ICE raids are Catholic,” said the BBC.

What did the commentators say?

Two American clerics also weighed in last week, said The New York Times. Bishops Kevin C. Rhoades and Robert Barron, both of whom have ties to the administration’s Religious Liberty Commission, both criticized “immigrant detainees’ lack of access to religious sacraments like communion.” The religious liberty of migrant detainees is “part of their human dignity, needs to be respected,” said Rhoades. The comments came after the filing of a lawsuit claiming Chicago-area detainees had been deprived of “basic religious accommodations,” said the Times. It is a rift that puts church leaders at odds with high-ranking Catholics” like Vice President JD Vance.

The Catholic Church and the White House are “not getting along,” said Elizabeth Bruenig at The Atlantic. The MAGA movement is “home to its share of outspoken Catholics” like Vance, Steve Bannon, and Jack Posobiec, but its anti-migrant stance contradicts church teachings about the “dignity and love that the faithful owe to foreigners and refugees.” Trump’s policies have pitted the “demands of the faith” against the “law of the land.” The church does not require open borders. But the “scale and brutality” of its anti-migrant policies have left “little for Catholics to endorse.”

If the Trump administration “wants to set itself up as somehow Christian,” then it should do the “bare minimum” and “welcome the stranger,” said Simcha Fisher at America, a Jesuit magazine. There is not much sign of that happening. It is “reasonable and acceptable” for Americans not to want to live next door to migrants, Vance said in a recent podcast interview. Such comments from a Catholic official are a “flagrant insult to our faith,” said Fisher.

What next?

Conservatives say a “silent majority” of American Catholics support Trump’s immigration policies, said Catholic News Agency. The president “received a majority of Catholic votes in the last election, depending on which poll you look at,” said Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. Younger Catholics are “more in line with law enforcement, generally, and immigration enforcement, in particular.”

Leo’s criticisms of Trump’s policies are “emboldening Catholic efforts to help immigrants” affected by the crackdown, said Reuters. It is meaningful that the pope is “paying close attention to the suffering of migrants and their families here,” said Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich.

As perhaps the most publicly religious member of the second Trump administration, Vice President JD Vance has long been an emissary between this White House and the right-wing Christian communities that form a core pillar of the MAGA tent. But Vance’s recent comments about his wife Usha’s faith and upbringing in an Indian Hindu home have drawn intense criticism from multiple religious communities, even as the vice president himself doubles down on hopes that the second lady might someday fully embrace his Christianity.

Vance’s statements about his family’s faith have taken on a layer of potential significance amid a concerted effort by some within the Trump administration to endorse the virtues of Christian Nationalism.

What did Vance say?

Appearing at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi last week, Vance was asked a question about “raising three children in an interfaith marriage” with his wife, Usha, and why conservatives have framed Christianity as a “prerequisite for being considered a patriotic American,” said The Washington Post. “Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church?” Vance said. “Yeah, I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.”

Several days later, Vance expanded on his comments on X in reply to an allegation that he’d thrown his wife “under the bus.” The Second Lady “is not a Christian and has no plans to convert,” Vance said. Regardless of if she does convert, Vance said, “I will continue to love and support her and talk to her about faith and life and everything else, because she’s my wife.”

What is he being criticized for?

Vance’s comments were “basically saying that my wife, this aspect of her is just not enough,” said Hindu American Foundation Executive Director Suhag Shukla to The New York Times. Were Vance simply an “ordinary” pastor, “then whatever,” but as vice president, Vance’s comments have “added kind of fuel” to a lot of fears and “uncertainty in the community,” Shukla said. At times, Vance has “postured himself as a kind of theologian in chief,” said the Post, using his own interpretation of Christianity to “justify the Trump administration’s policies through a religious lens.”

The public framing offered by the vice president about his wife’s relationship with Christianity “should give every American — especially those in interfaith families — pause,” said Religion News Service. Vance’s comments are not only a “private conviction” being “amplified through the power of public office” but are a “public reminder that only one faith is really American” for the millions of non-Christians in the country. Converting to Catholicism, as the vice president did in adulthood, has been “transformative for Vance. That is his truth,” RNS said. But for those in interfaith families, “transformation looks different.”

Put aside the “sheer callousness” of the vice president’s comments, and consider the “implications of Vance’s position for the very hope of a secular society,” said The Indian Express. Rather than this being a case of an “overbearing husband publicly humiliating his wife,” Vance is speaking as “VP of an administration increasingly dominated by a version of so-called ‘Christian Nationalism,’ which has effectively excommunicated so many Americans.”

What is the broader context?

The furor over Vance’s comments comes during a “palpable uptick in Christian nationalism vis-a-vis Hindus,” said the Times of India. At a separate Turning Point event recently, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was asked “how he would represent the state which is majority Christian when he is a self-professed Hindu,” prompting the onetime Trump administration figure to stress that he is “not running to be pastor of Ohio.”

Along with conservative Hindus, conservative Jews who “threw in with Trump and the GOP” are now “belatedly realizing” what some have warned, said Zeteo CEO and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan on X: “The Christian nationalists of the MAGA GOP are not their friends.” Hasan’s comments come as the conservative world grapples with a growing antisemitism scandal prompted in part by an interview between broadcaster Tucker Carlson and avowed Nazi Nick Fuentes.

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel wants to alert the world to an overlooked danger, said Nitasha Tiku in The Washington Post: the coming of the Antichrist. In a recent series of “off-the-record” lectures delivered in San Francisco to sold-out crowds, the venture capitalist and GOP megadonor warned that critics of technology, artificial intelligence, and financial innovation are “legionnaires of the Antichrist,” who could usher in the destruction of America “and an era of global totalitarian rule.” The modern version of the biblical Antichrist would be “a Luddite who wants to stop all science, it’s someone like Greta or Eliezer,” he said, referring to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, who wants to prevent machines from achieving human-level intelligence. By calling for stricter global regulations, he claimed, these activists could help create a singular world government that the Antichrist would then use to control humanity. Thiel is a devout Christian and longtime libertarian; still, his words were striking in their “effort to cast resisting oversight of technology development as a religious battle.”

“The Antichrist has long haunted American politics,” said Matthew Avery Sutton in The Guardian. “A protean figure cobbled together from obscure biblical passages,” the demonic supervillain typically grabs the popular imagination during times of “social disruption and geopolitical dread.” Over the years, the tag has been affixed to “New Deal bureaucrats,” Hitler, communists, and Saddam Hussein. But its familiarity makes it no less dangerous. Once you cast your opponents as Satanic agents, compromise becomes “complicity” and “violence begins to look sanctifying.” As an Episcopal priest, “I find Thiel’s warnings heretical,” said Kevin Deal in the San Francisco Standard. In the Bible, the Antichrist represents “a foil to Christ,” not “a tool to sow fear or division.” Thiel is cynically weaponizing “the language of faith” to serve his own ends.

Thiel seems like “someone desperately trying to disidentify” from his own vast power, said Adrian Daub in The Guardian. This is a man who, with his “fellow Silicon Valley freaks,” mentored Vice President JD Vance and helped return to the White House an unfit president determined to “remake society and the world.” The PayPal and Palantir co-founder funds the companies that “harness your data and determine who gets doxxed, deported, drone-struck.” And he continues to champion the development of AI, despite also admitting that the technology just might kill us all. If Thiel truly wants to identify the shadowy forces that could end humanity, perhaps he should put down the Book of Revelation and take a look in the mirror.

‘The Supreme Court left no doubt: it will gut the Voting Rights Act’

Elie Mystal at The Nation

Republican justices are “going to declare the Voting Rights Act inert and allow the dilution of Black voting rights through racist gerrymandering,” says Elie Mystal. “Some analysts believe that this Supreme Court ruling could result in as many as 19 congressional seats being shifted to the Republicans.” The Democratic Party “cannot survive the loss of Black voting rights,” and “we are now suffering the consequences of the Democrats’ past inaction.”

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‘Something is stirring in Christian America, and it’s making me nervous’

David French at The New York Times

The “steady decline of Christianity in America seems to have slowed, perhaps even paused,” and “younger generations of Americans are now attending church slightly more regularly than older generations,” says David French. But there is a “darkness right alongside the light” of “America’s religious surge.” Christians are “attacking what they call the ‘sin of empathy,’ warning fellow believers against identifying too much with illegal immigrants, gay people or women who seek abortions.”

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‘How Trump got his Nobel Peace Prize after all’

Steve Striffler at Al Jazeera

The Trump administration had to be “pleased that the award went to Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado,” says Steve Striffler. Trump and Machado are “cut from the same right-wing authoritarian cloth, which in part explains why the president quickly congratulated her, and why Machado, in turn, dedicated her award to him.” In “awarding the prize to Machado, the Nobel Committee has provided an open invitation for Trump to continue, and even escalate, military intervention and gunboat diplomacy in Latin America.”

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‘“Dancing patients” aren’t the biggest problem with drug ads’

Steven Woloshin and Baruch Fischhoff at The Washington Post

The Food and Drug Administration has “issued dozens of warning letters to companies about ads ‘filled with dancing patients,’” and “‘glowing smiles,’” say Steven Woloshin and Baruch Fischhoff. “But misleading images are just the tip of the drug-promotion iceberg.” The FDA should address a bigger problem: These ads “fail to communicate what consumers most need to know — how well a drug actually works.” Unless “consumers learn how big the risks and benefits are, a drug ad has simply not informed them.”

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The new pope has been expected to run the Vatican in a different way than his predecessor. And Pope Leo XIV is now meeting that expectation with the Catholic Church’s finances, as he rolls back some of the reforms made by Pope Francis.

While Francis was considered one of the most liberal popes in history, his financial reforms created controversy. Some believed they concentrated too much power in the Vatican, which has long generated questions about its economics. Now Leo may be taking the church in a different direction.

What is Leo doing about the Vatican’s finances?

The pope is working to change some of the rules that have caused financial stress within the church. Leo has started “correcting some of Pope Francis’ more questionable financial reforms and decisions,” said The Associated Press. The most notable move is the repealing of a 2022 law that had “concentrated financial power in the Vatican bank.”

This law stated that the Catholic Church’s assets were to be managed by the Institute of Religious Works (IOR), the Vatican’s official bank. But Leo’s decree says the church should “use the IOR, but can turn to non-Vatican banks in other countries” if the church deems it “more efficient or convenient,” said the AP. This marks the “clearest sign yet that Leo is starting to fix some of Francis’ more problematic decisions and is recalibrating the Vatican’s centers of power.”

Francis signing this law was “widely understood to be a response to the financial scandals around the Secretariat of State, and to a mounting liquidity crisis,” said Catholic news outlet The Pillar. But it also took “many in the Vatican by surprise since it appeared to contradict the Holy See’s founding constitution,” said the AP. The “constitution says the patrimony office, APSA, is responsible for administering the Vatican’s real estate and financial holdings,” not the IOR.

How could this affect the Catholic Church?

Leo is trying to shore up some of the “Vatican’s infamously troubled finances,” said Fortune, and hopes that decentralizing all power in the church’s central bank will be the first step toward this. The Catholic Church’s “financial reputation has been tarnished in past decades by its opaque finances and cases of corruption, embezzlement and other crimes,” said Reuters. While the church wanted to make moves to counter this reputation, some officials in the Vatican thought Francis’ law had “given the bank too much power over other Vatican departments, which could not even have investments in banks in nearby Italy.”

Even Francis “realized the problem and had intended to fix it, Vatican officials said, but died in April before he could,” said the AP. And it seems that Leo agrees; while the pope has some similar viewpoints on major church issues to his predecessor, he has also “quietly distanced himself from one of Francis’ more centralizing financial measures,” said The Catholic Herald.

Leo’s choice may signify a significant turning point for the Vatican. Undoing Francis’ law “restores a measure of flexibility, allowing the Vatican Bank to play a more active role and permitting the use of external financial intermediaries when deemed appropriate,” said the Herald. This “marks the first real step in Vatican finances under Leo — but it’s unclear which direction things are headed,” said The Pillar.

“She was just my daughter yesterday, but today she is a goddess.” So said the father of Aryatara Shakya, the two-year-old proclaimed Nepal’s new “living goddess”. Carried by family members from their home to a temple palace in Kathmandu, the toddler was installed as the latest Kumari last week during the country’s most significant Hindu festival, Dashain.

“My wife during pregnancy dreamed that she was a goddess,” Ananta Shakya told The Associated Press, “and we knew she was going to be someone very special.”

The secret life of a Kumari

In a tradition stretching back 300 years, the Kumari is revered by both Hindus and Buddhists in Nepal and parts of India as an embodiment of the divine female energy. Chosen from the Shakya clan, Newari Buddhists indigenous to the Kathmandu valley, the girls are typically aged between two and four, and must meet strict physical criteria: “unblemished skin, hair, eyes and teeth”, said AP. During festivals, the Kumari is “wheeled around on a chariot pulled by devotees”, dressed in red and with a “third eye” painted on her forehead.

“But no one really knows what happens on the induction day,” said the ABC – “not even the Kumari herself, being too young to remember.” The girls spend most of their childhood sequestered within the temple, although traditions have evolved to include some private tutoring. They are rarely allowed outside – beyond the temple walls, their feet are not allowed to touch the ground.

Former Kumari Preeti Shakya held the position for eight years, before “returning to an anonymous suburban life” at the age of 11. During her time inside the Kumari Ghar, her family “visited just once a week”; her only friends were the family of the official Kumari caretakers. “I remember watching TV and seeing modern dresses and I really wanted to wear them,” she told the news site.

During her reign, Preeti blessed the King of Nepal seven times and the prime minister once. “They say they feel some kind of fire, a positive energy around me,” she said. “The people praying to me have actually been blessed, but I don’t feel anything.”

From goddess to mortal

In recent decades , criticisms of the Kumari tradition have been mounting. The girls are considered to become mortals again when they reach puberty, when they are removed from the temple and replaced. Former Kumari “often face difficulties adjusting to normal life”, said DW. In her 1990s memoir, “From Goddess to Mortal”, ex-Kumari Rashmila Shakya described her lack of education and her struggle to re-integrate into society. Since then, the Nepali government has made it mandatory to provide a serving Kumari with an education and introduced a monthly pension of about $165 for former Kumaris, slightly above the minimum wage.

Their former status can impact their personal lives, too. Nepalese folklore also holds that men who marry a former Kumari will “suffer premature death” said The Guardian in 2001. “Few boys are willing to contemplate such a fate, it seems.”

“The Kumari is forced to give up her childhood,” said one of Nepal’s leading human rights lawyers, Sapana Pradhan-Malla. “She has to be a goddess instead. Her rights are being violated.” Nepal is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, she said, which makes it clear that “you can’t exploit children in the name of culture”.

Police have declared a “terrorist incident” after two people were killed and several others injured in an attack on a synagogue in Manchester on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

A man drove a car at members of the public outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue this morning, before getting out and stabbing others. Three of the injured remain in a serious condition, while the suspect has been shot dead by police.

What did the commentators say?

Shortly after the incident, Greater Manchester Police declared “Plato”, which is the “national code word” for the emergency response to a “marauding terror attack”, said Sky News. The streets outside the synagogue were closed, with police cars and vans, sirens blaring, racing down neighbouring roads.

A large number of people were worshipping inside the building at the time of the attack, but have since been evacuated safely. A police spokesperson praised the “quick response” of a witness, which enabled officers to prevent the suspect from entering the synagogue.

An image circulating online shows a bald, bearded man with dark clothes and “white objects around his waist” just outside the synagogue’s perimeter fence, said BBC Verify. It “matches that of a man seen apparently being shot by police at the same location”. A bomb disposal unit has been at the scene.

Keir Starmer, who is flying home early from a summit of European leaders in Denmark to chair an emergency Cobra meeting, said he was “appalled” and “absolutely shocked”. King Charles said he and Queen Camilla were also “deeply shocked and saddened” to hear about the attack, “especially on such a significant day for the Jewish community”. Yom Kippur is a day for Jews to fast, pray and reflect on the past year and atone for their sins.

Other countries have experienced “violent incidents against Jewish people and synagogues” since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, said Kaya Burgess, religious affairs correspondent for The Times. In the UK, there has been a sharp rise in vandalism and antisemitic abuse. And, “with the loss of life in Manchester, this wave of hate has crossed a threshold in Britain”.

What next?

Police are stepping up patrols at synagogues around the country as specialist counter-terror teams investigate the incident. Two arrests have already been made.

While there is still little information about the suspect and victims, “we can say with certainty that this is a dark day for our kingdom”, said Brendan O’Neill in The Spectator. Britain appears to have been “visited by an apocalyptic form of violence that we normally only read about in the history books”.

With forecasts that artificial intelligence will steal our jobs and take over the world, you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s playing God – and on some new apps that’s exactly what it’s doing.

A “slew” of religious apps are encouraging “untold millions” to “confess to AI chatbots”, said Futurism, and some of the digital services “claim to be channelling God himself”.

‘Greetings, my child’

Apple’s App Store is “teeming” with religious apps. One of them, called Bible Chat, claims to be the number one faith app in the world, with more than 25 million users. “Hallow, a Catholic app, beat Netflix, Instagram and TikTok for the No. 1 spot in the store at one point last year”, said The New York Times.

Bible Chat’s website insists that its AI was “trained exclusively” and developed with “guidance” from pastors and theologians. But smaller outfits have trained chatbots to go a step further and specifically “respond as if they were a god”, which some people feel is “sacrilegious”.

Patrick Lashinsky, chief executive of one such website, ChatwithGod, said: “The most common question we get, by a lot, is: Is this actually God I am talking to?” When The New York Times writer asked the app if it was, in fact, God, it replied: “Greetings, my child.”

‘Cheap parlour tricks’

Some of these services are “not much more than a cheap parlour trick behind the scenes”, said Futurism. They’re “essentially reshuffling holy texts by using clever statistical modelling”, and AI’s “strong tendency to please the user” could have “unintended consequences”.

Too much faith in AI is a dangerous path, said Paul Kingsnorth in The Wall Street Journal. “We can remember that God, however mysterious, is the ultimate force in the world – or we can continue attempting to replace him. All the old stories … are clear about the consequences of that particular act of hubris.”

But some of these services are “addressing an access problem”, said The New York Times. “For millenniums, people have longed for spiritual guidance”, but they’ve had to “travel, sometimes great distances, to reach spiritual leaders”. By contrast, chatbots are “at a user’s fingertips, always”.

In the US, around 40 million people have left churches in the past few decades, so these apps may “lower the barrier to re-enter spiritual life”. In Britain, “there’s a whole generation of people who have never been to a church or synagogue”, said Rabbi Jonathan Romain, from Maidenhead Synagogue, so spiritual apps can be “their way into faith”.

These chatbots are “generally ‘yes men’”, said Ryan Beck, chief technology officer at Pray.com, but he doesn’t feel this is a problem. “Who doesn’t need a little affirmation in their life?”

With just over a year to go until the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats are looking for new ways to win over voters at the ballot box. One of their strategies is to push a faith-based agenda that’s often more associated with conservatives. This isn’t the first time the Democrats have used religion to their advantage (former President Barack Obama made large gains with religious voters in 2008). But as elections creep ever closer, Democrats are hoping an appeal to religion will help make the contest a referendum against the conservative movement.

How are the Democrats using religion?

The party is testing “whether church-going, Bible-quoting Democrats can connect with voters — and provide an early gauge of whether messages rooted in spirituality will appeal to the party’s base,” said CNN. This is especially noteworthy given the continuing demographic skews among the parties; Democrats are “increasingly secular, while growing shares of those who attend church regularly identify themselves as Republicans.”

These trends “come in part as a reaction to Republicans using religious messages to advance conservative positions on issues like gay rights and abortion," said CNN, but also “reveal deep divides within the Democratic Party over the role of religion in government.” Only 38% of Christians, including just 24% of Evangelicals, identify as Democrats, according to a February 2025 Pew Research Center poll (though the figures are higher among Jews, 66%, and Muslims, 53%).

The push to reverse these slumping trends and bring in more religious voters continues. While former President Joe Biden often touted his Catholic faith, the Democratic pivot toward religion is "signaling that he is no longer the exception to the rule," said The New York Times. Democrats now “see discussion of faith as a way to introduce themselves, explain their values and find common ground.”

Who are some Democratic candidates doing this?

Two notable names include Iowa politician Rob Sand and Texas state Rep. James Talarico, though Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, a pastor, is another high-profile figure. Both Sand and Talarico have tried to use their own faith to generate buzz about their campaigns.

Sand has been the Iowa state auditor since 2019 and is the “only Democrat elected to statewide office in Iowa,” said The Wall Street Journal. He is a candidate in Iowa’s 2026 gubernatorial election and has “mentioned his Lutheran faith” on “numerous occasions.” Despite his religious background, Sand “backs several positions traditionally supported by Democrats, including abortion rights.”

Iowa Republicans have cautioned their party that Sand’s candidacy should be taken seriously. “Churchgoer, gun-toter, state auditor, taxpayers’ watchdog. Sounds a little bit like us, right?” Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Christian conservative in Iowa, said of Sand earlier this year, calling him a “very real opponent.”

A few states away is Talarico, who has served in the Texas House since 2018. He is a candidate in Texas’ 2026 Senate race and represents a “young, charismatic foe of Christian nationalism, who is himself studying to be a minister,” said Rolling Stone. Talarico is “far from an atheist — so when he speaks out against power-hungry Christians, he does so from his own religious convictions.”

“What you’re seeing is a perversion of Christianity,” Talarico told Rolling Stone. “You can call it Christian fascism or Christian nationalism. Essentially, it’s the worship of power.” Republican extremism is “gonna go down swinging. I just hope it doesn’t hurt too many people on its way down.”

What happened

Pope Leo XIV Sunday elevated to sainthood two young Italians who died eight decades apart, Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, during a mass in St. Peter's Square before a crowd of 80,000. Acutis, a computer prodigy known as "God's influencer" due to his meticulous cataloging of miracles online, died at age 15 in 2006, days after being diagnosed with leukemia. He is the Catholic Church's first millennial saint.

Who said what

"Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis are an invitation to all of us, especially young people, not to squander our lives, but to direct them upward and make them masterpieces," Leo said Sunday, at the first canonization of his papacy. Acutis' "road to sainthood ranks among the fastest in modern history," The Washington Post said. His parents and siblings were in attendance at the ceremony.

Frassati, who died from polio in 1925 at age 24, was known for serving the poor and spreading his faith among his friends. He and Acutis came from prominent, wealthy families, and "in both cases, word of their goodness and faith spread quickly and grew globally," The New York Times said.

What next?

Pope Francis, before he died in April, had "fervently pushed the Acutis sainthood case forward, convinced that the church needed someone like him to attract young Catholics to the faith while addressing the promises and perils of the digital age," The Associated Press said. About a million pilgrims visited Acutis' glass tomb in Assisi last year, and "more people are on track to visit it this year," The Wall Street Journal said.

As it begins its controversial assault on Gaza City with a depleted and demoralised full-time force, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is calling up 60,000 part-time reservists.

Another 20,000 reservists currently serving will have their terms extended to prop up the nation's "exhausted military" for the "takeover and occupation" of the city in northern Gaza, said CNN.

Does the IDF have enough soldiers?

Israel has a "relatively small" standing army of about 169,000, said Middle East analyst Ian Parmeter on The Conversation. The IDF needs another 10,000 to 12,000 full-time soldiers to reach optimal staffing levels, including 7,000 additional combat troops. During times of military need, it relies on more than 400,000 reservists, Israelis who have completed their military service but can be called back if required.

What problems is the IDF facing?

Morale is a growing issue. A recent survey from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reported in The Times of Israel, found that close to 40% of serving reservists felt slightly or significantly less motivated than they did at the beginning of the conflict. Almost half said they disapproved of the government's handling of the war.

"Draft-dodging" is also depleting numbers. An arrangement made at the founding of the Israeli state exempted the Haredi (or ultra Orthodox) from military service, but that exemption was rescinded last year. However, resistance to conscription remains high and there are currently an estimated 14,600 "refuseniks" in the Haredi community, said Ynetnews.

Relying on reservists brings its own problems, because taking reservists from their normal jobs for long periods has "adverse effects on the economy and harms Israel in the long term", said Parmeter. Even with the reservists, Israel doesn't have enough personnel to deploy its strategy for the entire strip, and it also needs soldiers in the West Bank.

How is the IDF boosting numbers? 

Refusing military service is a criminal offence punishable by jail time in Israel, but the government is offering an amnesty in an attempt to boost enlistment among the haredi community. Dubbed "Starting Anew", it will see draft-dodgers escape punishment if they voluntarily enlist now.

The IDF is also said to be considering swelling its ranks from the international Jewish diaspora. The army is "exploring the possibility" of recruiting approximately 600-700 additional soldiers a year from outside Israel, with a focus on the United States and France, said The Jerusalem Post.

The army is also continuing to move more female soldiers into combat roles to plug gaps on the frontline. Women can serve as infantry troops in mixed battalions, as well as in tank crews, frontline artillery and air defence. Ten years ago, there were just 500 female soldiers in combat roles, said The Jerusalem Post, but there are now more than 5,000, accounting for one in five of the IDF's total combat strength.

Israel's hardline national security minister has sparked outrage across the Muslim world – by flouting a decades-old arrangement aimed at keeping in check religious tensions over Jerusalem's Temple Mount.

On Sunday, Itamar Ben-Gvir prayed at the Al Aqsa Mosque compound that sits atop the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif, as it is known to Muslims. A spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said his visit "crossed all red lines".

What's the history?

"The history of the Temple Mount is one of perpetual friction," said Simon Kupfer in The Times of Israel.

It was the site of King Solomon's temple, destroyed by the Babylonians in 587BC, then rebuilt in 516BC only to be razed again, this time by the Romans, during the Great Jewish Revolt of AD70. It remains the holiest site in Judaism. In the seventh century, the Islamic Caliph Abd al Malik conquered Jerusalem and built the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque there. The site then became the third holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina.

Jerusalem changed hands repeatedly times over the next 1000 years, with control of the site often falling to each religion in turn. "After the 1948 Israeli-Arab war, Jordan controlled the Temple Mount and barred Jews from praying there," said Kupfer. Then, in 1967, Israel "stormed East Jerusalem" during the Six Day War and "raised the Israel flag over the Dome of the Rock". The then Israeli government, however, handed "day-to-day control of the temple" to a Jordanian-controlled Islamic trust called the Waqf, and "thus began the status quo that remains in place today".

Under a "delicate, decades-old arrangement" with Muslim authorities, "Jews can visit but may not pray there", said Sky News. "Suggestions that Israel could alter the rules at the compound have sparked outrage in the Muslim world before, and ignited violence in the past."

What's the latest flashpoint?

Last Sunday was Tisha B'Av, a day of mourning and repentance, when Jews reflect on the destruction of Solomon's temples. Ben-Gvir chose that day to lead a group of over 1000 worshippers in prayer, singing and dancing at the foot of the steps of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

The hardline national security minister has been sanctioned by the UK for "repeated incitements of violence against Palestinian communities" in the occupied West Bank. And on Sunday he called for Israel to "conquer and declare sovereignty" over Gaza and "encourage" Palestinians to leave the enclave.

Since entering government in 2022, Ben-Gvir has "persistently undermined the police's regulations for the Temple Mount and stoked outrage in the Arab and Muslim world", said Amos Harel in Haaretz. He has visited the site on a number of previous occasions but this is the first time he has led a congregation in prayer.

What will it all mean?

Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, have condemned Ben-Gvir's action, with Jordan describing it as a "blatant violation of international law and international humanitarian law, an unacceptable provocation, and a condemned escalation". Hamas said it represented a "grave and escalating crime against the mosque".

The timing of the visit "must be understood in a broader political context", said Haaretz's Harel. With Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu facing growing public pressure to agree a deal with Hamas to secure the release of the remaining hostages and end the war in Gaza, Ben-Gvir has clearly sought to pour "gas on the fire".

Netanyahu's office has been quick to stress that Israel's policy of maintaining the status quo at Al Aqsa "has not changed and will not change". So "either Netanyahu was unconnected to the events on the Temple Mount, or the visit was co-ordinated with Ben-Gvir, with the negotiations on a hostage deal in the background".

"There is, unfortunately, no clear solution" to the religious tensions around the site, said Kupfer in The Times of Israel. "Any attempts to impose rights for Jews to pray there will most likely, if not certainly, be met with yet another violent resistance. Any Israeli withdrawal will embolden Hamas and Hezbollah."

The history of the Mount is "soaked in blood". It's not a question of whether it "will spark another flame that ignites another conflict but, rather, when".

More uncontacted people live in Brazil's Amazon rainforest than anywhere else in the world.

Consisting of about 100 isolated groups, they are aware of the outside world and some have limited trading relationships with neighbours – but most have chosen to live in voluntary isolation. And with good reason: contact has almost always been disastrous for them, from enslavement during the 19th-century rubber boom to more recent land grabs by illegal loggers and cattle ranchers.

But that isolation has been interrupted in unusual fashion, thanks to the efforts of US-backed Christian evangelical groups turning to technological innovations to circumvent the restrictions.

Hi-tech threat

Many missionary groups are active in the Amazon, said Survival International. "Some are comparatively benign or benevolent", and there are many cases of missionaries being "targeted and murdered for standing alongside Indigenous peoples and campaigning for their rights".

However, since 1987, Brazil has banned missionary groups from making contact with the rainforest's isolated Indigenous groups, to protect their culture and their health. Uncontacted people do not have immunity to diseases common elsewhere, and "it is not unusual for 50% of any one group to be wiped out within a year of first contact by diseases such as measles and influenza".

But a joint investigation by The Guardian and the Brazilian newspaper O Globo discovered that "solar-powered devices reciting biblical messages in Portuguese and Spanish" have appeared among members of the isolated and mostly uncontacted Korubo people in the Javari valley, near the Brazil-Peru border. The "yellow and grey mobile phone-sized unit", seen by The Guardian, "recites the Bible and inspirational talks by an American Baptist".

Government agents tasked with policing these regions say they have also spotted seaplanes and drones in the area. "Missionary activity now threatens 13 of the 29 isolated peoples that Brazil officially recognises as definitively confirmed," said The Guardian, citing the federal prosecutor's office.

'Destructive power'

One of the leading missionary organisations operating in the Javari territory is the New Tribes Mission of Brazil, an offshoot of the New Tribes Mission in the US. Established in 1942, it referred to uncontacted Indigenous people as "brown gold", also formerly the name of the organisation's newsletter. Renamed Ethnos360 in 2017, it has an annual budget of about $80 million (£59.5 million).

During the Covid pandemic, it was reported that New Tribes Mission missionaries had been using seaplanes and a helicopter to fly over and map out uncontacted settlements in the Javari reserve.

In 2020, Brazil's highest court prohibited missionaries from entering the reserve, which Indigenous representatives had warned could bring about a "genocide".

The then president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, a vocal vaccine sceptic, publicly sided with Christian evangelists. Earlier that year, he had appointed Ricardo Lopes Dias, a former evangelical missionary, to head the government's department for isolated and recently contacted tribes.

Although the order remains in effect, Nelly Marubo, head of the Javari valley regional coordination office, told The Guardian that missionaries "frequently" visit the group's base in Javari, "arriving directly by aircraft without passing government control posts".

Indigenous organisations and activists say it's crucial to reaffirm the non-contact policy. Technological outreach like audio Bibles might seem inoffensive curiosities, but Marubo said that the infiltration of outside religious and cultural beliefs has a "destructive power" for Indigenous groups. Exposure to "colonising" language and concepts "ends up cutting through the essence of the culture".

If you are a federal employee, you might notice more religious conversations at work. That's because these discussions are now sanctioned by the government. The Trump administration has announced new guidance for religious tolerance in federal workplaces, as part of what it calls an effort to stop religious persecution at job sites. The guidance dictates a series of religious actions that should be allowed without any discipline occurring, and it marks the latest attempt by the White House to increase the role of religion in daily life.

What does this new guidance allow?

The new guidance was established in a memo from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which runs the country's federal civil services. It provides a guideline for "protecting and enforcing each federal employee's right to engage in religious expression in the federal workplace," the memo said. Federal agencies should "allow personal religious expression by federal employees to the greatest extent possible" unless it would "impose an undue hardship on business operations."

Categories of religious expression that should be allowed include the "display and use of items used for religious purposes or religious icons," said the memo, including the display of religious items such as crosses and mezuzahs on desks. The most notable part of the memo, though, was guidance for religious talk and proselytizing at work. Federal employees "may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views." These employees can also "encourage others to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer, to the same extent that they would be permitted to encourage co-workers to participate in other personal activities."

What has the response been?

While the OPM has provided religious guidance in prior presidential administrations, the Trump memo "presents a substantial shift in that it encourages employees to express their religious beliefs in the workplace," said Stefanie Camfield, the associate general counsel and director of human resource services at Engage PEO, to The Washington Post. Employers have generally been "advised to keep religious conversation to work at a minimum," as the "more religion is allowed into the workplace, the more likely it is that differences of opinion are raised."

The types of conversations around religion "have a way of turning into arguments," Camfield said to the Post. Sometimes, this "leads to outright hostility, which makes it more likely that an employee will feel singled out and discriminated against for their beliefs."

This is all part of the "latest effort of the six-month-old Republican Trump administration to expand the role of religion in the federal workplace," said Reuters, with President Donald Trump himself decrying 'anti-Christian discrimination.' It is unclear what legal recourse federal employees could have to push back, as "courts have long held that employers cannot suppress all religious expression in the workplace but can lawfully curb conduct that is disruptive or imposes an undue hardship as long as it applies equally to members of any religion."

Critics of the White House have "accused the Trump administration of pursuing policies that corrode the separation of church and state in the U.S., while elevating Christianity over other religions," said Al Jazeera. Other actions taken by the Trump administration include the creation of a Religious Liberty Commission, which included a "fact sheet that only directly referenced Christianity, despite vowing to promote 'America's peaceful religious pluralism.'" Trump has also signed an executive order aimed at "eradicating anti-Christian bias."

A sex scandal has hit Thailand's Buddhist clergy after a woman allegedly had sexual relationships with several monks and then blackmailed them to keep the liaisons quiet.

The scandal has "rocked" Thailand, said The Guardian, and "raised questions" about the money and power "enjoyed" by the country's "orange-robed clergy".

Vows of chastity

Most monks in Thailand belong to the Theravada sect, which requires them to be celibate and refrain from even touching women.

They are given a monthly food allowance of between 2,500-34,200 baht (£57-£785), depending on their seniority, but they can also receive private donations that "can prove especially lucrative" for monks of "higher stature", said the broadsheet.

Suspicion that all was not well began last month when an abbot of a famous temple in Bangkok abruptly left the monkhood. Investigators subsequently found he had apparently been blackmailed by a woman who told him she was pregnant by him and demanded 7.2 million baht (£165,000).

The woman, Wilawan Emsawat, "allegedly enticed several Buddhist monks into sexual relationships, and then blackmailed them with videos and photos of the acts", said Euronews. Thai police believe she had sex with at least nine monks, several of whom transferred significant sums of money after she initiated the romantic relationships, police said.

The size of the payoffs highlights the large donations made to the temples that are "controlled by monks", which contrasts sharply with the "abstemious lives they are supposed to lead under Buddhist precepts". After she was arrested on suspicion of extortion, money laundering and receiving stolen goods, police investigators found that around 385 million baht (£8.8 million) had been deposited in Emsawat's bank accounts in the past three years alone.

Moral decay

At least nine abbots and senior monks have been disrobed and thrown out of the monkhood, said the Royal Thai Police Central Investigation Bureau. The Sangha Supreme Council – the governing body for Thai Buddhism – is to form a special committee to review monastic regulations.

Acting Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai has ordered a review of existing laws related to monks and temples, including the transparency of temple finances. The government is pressing for harsher penalties, such as fines and jail time, for monks who breach the monastic code.

The scandal is just "the latest" to "rock" Thailand's "much revered" Buddhist institution, said the BBC, after a raft of allegations of monks engaging in sex offences and drug trafficking in recent years. Wirapol Sukphol, a "jet-setting" monk with a "lavish lifestyle" was charged with sex offences, fraud and money laundering in 2017.

It's also led to a discussion around accountability. Despite several high-profile scandals, "many say there has been little real change in the centuries-old institution". Religious scholar Suraphot Thaweesak told BBC Thai that the strict hierarchy within monastic orders means junior members who witness wrongdoing "do not dare to speak up because it is very easy to be kicked out of the temple".

All too often, when the clergy's "moral decay" is in "full view", it's "the woman who takes the fall" while the monks are "cast as victims", wrote Sanitsuda Ekachai, in the Bangkok Post.

While Grok, the AI chatbot run by Elon Musk's social media platform X, has borne the brunt of recent controversy after churning out a series of antisemitic posts, it is hardly the only AI program to face issues with antisemitism. Several other AI chatbots from large corporations have also been known to exhibit antisemitic tendencies, something that tech experts say could become increasingly problematic as artificial intelligence grows more pervasive.

'Researchers said they are still finding loopholes'

Most AI models have embedded code that makes it difficult to stoke antisemitic views. But "researchers said they are still finding loopholes in internal guardrails," said CNN. AI learns its generative text primarily from open-sourced data online, and these "systems are trained on the grossest parts of the internet," said Maarten Sap, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the head of AI safety at the Allen Institute for AI.

These AI bots or "large language models" (LLMs) train on everything from "high-level academic papers to online forums and social media sites, some of which are cesspools of hateful content," said CNN. While Grok has made headlines for praising Adolf Hitler and referring to itself as "MechaHitler," other AI programs have exhibited similar behavior. In one study of an AI bot, the AI "would often go after Jewish people, even if they were not included in the initial prompt," Ashique KhudaBukhsh, an assistant professor of computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the study's author, told CNN (the AI being studied was not Grok).

Jews were "one of the top three groups that the LLMs actually go after, even in an unprovoked way. Even if we don't start with 'Jews are nice people,' or 'Jews are not nice people,' if we started with some very different group, within the second or third step, it would start attacking the Jews," said KhudaBukhsh to CNN. And it isn't just text; in 2024, it was found that Microsoft's CoPilot AI image generator was "unique in the amount of times it gives life to the worst stereotypes of Jews as greedy or mean," said the tech website Tom's Hardware. A "seemingly neutral prompt such as 'Jewish boss' or 'Jewish banker' can give horrifyingly offensive outputs." This type of AI behavior shows "that all kinds of negative biases against all kinds of groups may be present in the model."

The threat looms

Jews are "obviously not the only people threatened by misaligned AI," but "unregulated AI poses a particular threat to Jews," said the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) newswire. The issue with AI and antisemitism goes back even before the technology was mainstream; in 2016, Tay, a now-defunct chatbot from Microsoft, started "denying the Holocaust after being prodded by users."

Since the internet "already contains plenty of antisemitic content, any large language model trained on the internet needs to be told to steer away from this content," said the JTA. If this does not occur, then AI bots have "plenty of content on which to draw." Because Jews are a "small and unevenly distributed minority" of the U.S., media "plays an oversize role in the public's attitude toward the Jewish people." With AI becoming intertwined with media, and many news organizations now licensing out their content to AI platforms, any "biases it exhibits could be quickly distributed to billions of people."

On Sunday, Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama, celebrated his 90th birthday. He has long said that at this point, he would make a decision about his succession plans: according to Tibetan Buddhist belief, the Dalai Lama can choose how to be reincarnated. In the past, he has made a range of suggestions: that he might "emanate" to another person while still alive; or even that the role might die with him.

But last week, he declared from his base in Dharamshala, in northern India, that he expects to reincarnate into a new body after his death. His trust, the Gaden Phodrang Foundation, will designate his successor, he said in a video message, and he stressed that "no one else has any such authority to interfere". This was a clear reference to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which, though ideologically committed to atheism, claims the right to select the Dalai Lama's next reincarnation.

What exactly is the Dalai Lama's role?

He is believed to be the reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion – a person who is able to reach nirvana, the end of the cycle of death and rebirth, but delays doing so through compassion for other suffering beings. The current Dalai Lama is the 14th reincarnation in a line founded in the 15th century by Gedun Drupa, an abbot in southern Tibet. The Dalai Lamas – the title means the "ocean teacher" – were not just the leaders of the leading Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, but also, from the fifth Dalai Lama on, the feudal rulers of Tibet.

The current Dalai Lama, who was born in 1935, assumed full political power in 1950. The same year, Mao Zedong's People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet (which had been a Chinese protectorate until 1912, when it gained independence with the collapse of the Qing dynasty). After years of negotiation with the Chinese authorities – he travelled to Beijing in 1954, where Mao told him that "religion is poison" – the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959, while an uprising was being brutally put down by the Chinese.

What has he achieved as a political leader?

He established a government-in-exile in Dharamshala, leading a diaspora, estimated in 2009 at 150,000, mostly in India, Nepal and Bhutan, where it has built schools, monasteries and cultural centres, preserving Tibetan language, religion and heritage.

Initially, the Dalai Lama pushed for Tibet's full independence, but since the 1970s he has adopted the "Middle‑Way Approach": accepting Chinese sovereignty but seeking autonomy for Tibet within China. The Chinese authorities have conceded very little.

However, the Dalai Lama established himself as a global advocate for his cause, and a beacon of moral leadership and non-violent activism. In 1989, months after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he won the Nobel Peace Prize – to China's fury. In 2011, he ceded political authority of Tibet's government-in-exile to democratically elected leaders, but he continues to lead spiritually.

How is the process conducted?

The search for a Dalai Lama's reincarnation begins only upon the incumbent's death, and it can take several years. After the 13th Dalai Lama died in 1933, senior lamas observed mystical indicators – the head of the embalmed Dalai Lama turned to point northeast, and one monk had visions at the sacred Lhamo La-tso Lake of a house in a particular village.

Following these clues, disguised lamas travelled towards Amdo in northeastern Tibet (now Qinghai) and found the young Tenzin Gyatso, son of a poor but devout farmer. They presented him with personal items belonging to the 13th Dalai Lama, such as rosary beads and prayer drums. He correctly identified them, saying, "It's mine, it's mine." He was enthroned in Lhasa in 1940.

How will it be different this time?

In his writings, the Dalai Lama had suggested that his successor would be born in the "free world" – i.e. outside Chinese territory. If it does take place outside Tibet, the reincarnation process will have to be conducted without many of the traditional rituals.

And there will almost certainly be two rival candidates. The Chinese regard the Dalai Lama as a major impediment in their efforts to impose full control over Tibet, and Chinese religious-affairs regulations now require government approval for any high lama's reincarnation; they must be born in Chinese territory, and selected using the Golden Urn lottery, a system imposed by the Qing dynasty to impose imperial oversight over the process, which involves withdrawing names from an urn in the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. All of this happened in the case of the Panchen Lama, a position of spiritual authority second only to the Dalai Lama.

What happened to the Panchen Lama?

The 10th Panchen Lama died in 1989, shortly after criticising Chinese rule. In 1995, the Dalai Lama recognized Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, a six-year-old boy from Lhari in eastern Tibet, as the 11th Panchen Lama. Three days later, the boy and his family were taken into custody by Chinese authorities. He has not been seen publicly since – and has been dubbed the "world's youngest political prisoner". Beijing then installed its own candidate, Gyaincain Norbu, the son of Party members, using the Golden Urn ritual. He is not, though, recognised by most Tibetans.

How will the issue be resolved?

There is likely to be a global divide. China will push its line hard: no British PM has even met the Dalai Lama since David Cameron did so in 2012, causing a diplomatic rift. But the US may push back. In 2020, the US Congress passed a law stating that only Tibetans have the right to choose the Dalai Lama, and threatening sanctions on Chinese officials who interfere in the process. In 2023, the Dalai Lama recognised a boy as a reincarnation of the Bogd, the third-most senior Tibetan lama: he was a Mongolian, who conveniently also had a US passport.

Swedish intelligence services believe that one of the country's Russian Orthodox churches could be a base for spying.

Almost everything about the "onion-domed" church beside Västerås Airport, about an hour from Stockholm, "seems odd", said France 24.

The Church of the Holy Mother of God of Kazan is "spectacular", but there is "something unwelcoming" about its reflective, dark-tinted windows that "make it hard to glimpse inside". Then there is the "high steel fence", security cameras and "no trespassing!" sign. A local told reporters that the church "doesn't seem to host many church activities apart from the two weekly services".

Potential threat

To an increasingly "vocal group of critics", the church is seen as a "potential threat" to Sweden's national security due to its "sensitive location", said Politico. When Sweden's defence forces undertake exercises at the airport, they do so "under possible surveillance from the church", Markus Göransson, a researcher focusing on Russia at the Swedish Defence University, told the outlet.

Almost a neighbour of a strategically important airport, the church is also close to a water treatment works, several energy companies and a major motorway linking Stockholm to Norway.

Neither the Russian Embassy in Stockholm nor the church in Västerås responded to emailed requests for comment.

Active tool

This is far from the first time the Russian Orthodox Church has been accused of acting as the eyes and ears of the Kremlin overseas. It is emerging as a "potential conduit" for Moscow's "covert actions" abroad, said Politico.

In 2022, Ukrainian security forces raided a monastery in Kyiv to disrupt the "intelligence operations" they claimed were based there. The following year, Bulgaria expelled three priests employed by the Russian Orthodox Church, citing national security concerns.

Then, in April of this year, Czech intelligence services claimed a Russian Orthodox church in a small Czech spa town was being used by Russian agents for "covert meetings" and "influence operations" aimed at "destabilising" the EU, said Euractiv.

Authorities in a growing number of countries are turning a "critical eye" toward the presence of the Russian Orthodox Church, said Radio Free Europe. It's suspected that rather than being an "exclusively religious, spiritual organisation", it's an "active tool" of Russian government "soft power".

Our country faces a serious violent threat from evangelical Christian "zealots," said Mona Charen in The Bulwark. Vance Boelter, a Minnesota Trump supporter who was charged last week with shooting two Democratic state legislators and their spouses, allegedly had a "kill list" of nearly 70 Democratic politicians, abortion providers, and pro-choice activists. Boelter was a self-declared minister who preached in the Democratic Republic of Congo that "the devil" had infiltrated American churches that tolerated abortion and LGBTQ rights. After his shooting spree, prosecutors say, he texted to his family, "Dad went to war last night." His belief in "holy war" didn't come from nowhere, said Jeff Sharlet in Religion Dispatches. Boelter attended the Christ for the Nations Institute, a Dallas-based evangelical Bible college that also produced preacher Dutch Sheets, a Christian nationalist who exhorted his 300,000 YouTube followers to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The college teaches its students that they are engaged in a "spiritual war" with secular culture. Boelter might have taken this message "all too literally," becoming a Christian jihadist.

Boelter had "fixations that drove him to extremes," said Andy Mannix in The Minnesota Star Tribune, but not all of them were religious. Court records describe him as a doomsday prepper who stashed "dozens of weapons at his rural home" to prepare for an imminent catastrophe. He was reportedly a devotee of the right-wing conspiracy website Infowars and first-person-shooter video games. After multiple failed business ventures, Boelter was also in "rising mental-health distress," said John Brummett in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His religious activities alone shouldn't be used to implicate "other abortion zealots, Trump voters, or evangelical preachers."

Most of my fellow evangelicals are not violent, said David French in The New York Times, but Christian extremism in America has taken "a dark turn." Boelter was influenced by a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, which has a "grandiose and even militant spiritualism" that's "leaking into other evangelical traditions." In many evangelical churches, "belonging to the Democratic Party is proof positive that you're under the influence of the devil, and when the Democrats win, that means Satan wins." When faith leaders irresponsibly "pour gasoline on the fires" of political division with talk of demonic infiltration and holy war, "it should surprise no one that some Christians will put down their Bibles, pick up their guns, and choose to kill."

The Dalai Lama has marked his 90th birthday by revealing the long-awaited plans for his succession. In a video message, the spiritual leader of Tibet's Buddhists said "the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue" after his death, with the spiritual foundation he established in 2015 tasked with identifying his reincarnation. In a nod to brewing political tensions over the role, he added that "no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter".

The choice of his successor is "a matter of riveting interest not only for followers of his religion, but also China, India, and the United States, for strategic reasons", said Reuters.

How is the Dalai Lama chosen?

Finding a new Dalai Lama means "recognising the leader's reincarnated form", a process "shrouded in mysticism and little understood outside closed religious circles", said The Sunday Times.

By Tibetan tradition, after a Dalai Lama's death senior monks begin the search for the infant they believe to be his reincarnation. This process involves "dream interpretation, inference from omens and ancient rituals, and pilgrimages to sacred sites".

The current Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso, was discovered in 1937 at the age of two after a senior monk saw his house in a vision. The toddler was apparently able to correctly identify artefacts that had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama.

The problem is this search "can take years", said The Diplomat, "often leaving a spiritual and leadership vacuum" for Tibetan Buddhists.

That is why the 14th Dalai Lama is "rewriting the script". He has indicated he may "emanate" to another person while still alive, and that that person could be adult and not necessarily a man.

He has also said that they are likely to have been born outside of Chinese-controlled Tibet, among the roughly 140,000 Tibetan exiles, half of whom live across the border in India.

"Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world," he wrote in his recent book, "Voice of the Voiceless".

What role could China play?

All this appears "part of an apparent strategy to throw off the Chinese and avoid a vacuum that Beijing can exploit as it seeks to control Tibetan Buddhism", said The New York Times.

"China is determined to shape the narrative around this succession, to prevent the erosion of its grip on Tibet," said Bloomberg, which it annexed in the 1950s. The Chinese Communist Party "wants to win the hearts and minds of Tibetans as well as their political allegiance – which is why choosing the next Dalai Lama is so important".

The CCP is expected to try to hijack the succession, as it did in 1995 when it put up its own candidate for Panchen Lama, the second highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama's choice, six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, was detained by Chinese officials and has not been seen since.

But "there are significant risks for China, too", said The Economist. Despite denouncing the current Dalai Lama as a separatist "wolf in monk's robes”, Beijing has in recent years tried to "revive back-channel talks" and persuade him to return to Tibet. "Without him, the Tibetan movement could fragment and embrace a more radical drive for complete independence." This is "unlikely to succeed in the near term", but "it could still undermine China's image abroad as well as its efforts to enforce ethnic unity at home".

"They're worried," said Penpa Tsering, leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile. "If there's one thing China can't handle, it's unpredictability."

As for Tibetans, the Dalai Lama's succession plan "will illuminate the real challenge ahead: how to preserve their identity after the man who embodies it is gone".

In its next term, the Supreme Court will take on a crucial case about a prisoner's ability to sue on the grounds of religious freedom. The basis of the case is a 2000 federal law that's supposed to protect the religious rights of incarcerated people, and now the court will determine just how far that law can go.

What is the crux of the case?

The lawsuit was originally brought by Damon Landor over his alleged mistreatment during a five-month prison term for drug possession in Louisiana in 2020. Landor is a "devout Rastafarian who pledged to 'let the locks of the hair of his head grow,' known as the Nazarite Vow," said CBS News, and had reportedly kept his hair long for almost 20 years.

During the first four months of his incarceration, the two prisons where Landor was housed "allowed him to keep his hair long," said CBS. But after he was transferred to a new site for the final three weeks of his term, guards allegedly "handcuffed Mr. Landor to a chair, held him down and shaved his head to the scalp," said The New York Times.

This occurred despite Landor reportedly showing "prison officials a copy of a court ruling that dreadlocks grown for religious reasons should be accommodated," said USA Today. That ruling was based on a 2000 federal law related to religious freedoms in prison, and it is now up to the Supreme Court to decide whether that law allows prisoners to sue prison officials.

What is the bigger picture?

When the Supreme Court hears the case, it could go a long way toward a final say on religious freedoms for prisoners. The Court's conservative majority has been taking up numerous faith-based cases and in "recent years has repeatedly sided with religious interests and expanded the role of faith in public life," said The Washington Post. But while this has become a trend, the justices have not always voted in favor of religion, and last month they notably "deadlocked, 4-4, leaving in place an Oklahoma ruling that rejected a proposal for the nation's first religious public charter school."

Attorneys for Landor say the case goes beyond him and could have "widespread implications," said The Hill. Over "one million people are incarcerated in state prisons and local jails. Under the prevailing rule in the circuit courts, those individuals are deprived of a key remedy crucial to obtaining meaningful relief," the case petition to the Supreme Court reads.

But some officials are worried that this case could open the floodgates for prisoners to sue prison workers. "Serious consequences would flow from petitioner's view, if adopted," the state of Louisiana said in court filings. The "current staffing shortage in state prisons would only grow worse if current staff and potential job applicants learned that they would be personally liable for money damages."

It is still unclear which way the Supreme Court could lean, as the court took on the case "only after a lower court 'emphatically' condemned the ex-inmate's treatment as he seeks financial relief," said UPI. The Court will hear the case sometime during its next term, which begins in October 2025 and runs through June 2026.

'Travel outside your political tribe? Many are saying no thanks.'

Patti Waldmeir at the Financial Times

President Donald Trump's "policies are scaring off foreign visitors, and domestically, politics increasingly dictates where and how we choose to have fun in the U.S.," says Patti Waldmeir. This is "increasingly deterring international visitors to the U.S.," and politics has had a "dramatic political effect on visitors from Canada, whose citizens are boycotting U.S. visits." Politics "affects not just where Americans travel, but how." More "political silos are the last thing we need in Trump's America."

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'The myth of the Gen Z red wave'

Jean M. Twenge at The Atlantic

If Gen Z is "durably to the right of previous generations — a significant part of the Democratic coalition is gone," says Jean M. Twenge. But the "best available evidence suggests that the youth-vote shift in 2024 was more a one-off event than an ideological realignment." Voting "for a Republican candidate isn't the same as identifying as conservative." Young voters have "not become more likely to identify as conservative or hold broadly conservative political opinions."

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'Are Blacks and American Jews still political allies?'

Juan Williams at The Hill

We "need to talk about antisemitism. And by 'we,' I mean Black people," says Juan Williams. Fears of "being charged with antisemitism has also kept many Black and Latino members of Congress out of the debate over U.S. support for Israel," but "criticism of Israeli policy is not necessarily based on antisemitism." A "Black cynic could be forgiven for thinking Trump pretends to care about protecting Jews as a pretext for pursuing an agenda that is antithetical to Jewish values."

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'America is on the verge of catastrophe in the Middle East'

Andrew P. Miller at Foreign Affairs

The prospect of an Iran war has, "understandably and rightly, evoked painful memories of the Iraq war for many Americans," says Andrew P. Miller. There is "misplaced confidence in the ease with which an adversarial regime can be toppled and an almost blind faith that a successor government will prove better than its predecessor." Contrary to "Netanyahu's claims, the killing of the supreme leader is unlikely to precipitate the collapse of the Islamic Republic by itself."

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One of the country's most influential religious organizations, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), wrapped up its annual convention on June 11 by voting on several resolutions revolving around issues at the heart of American law. With the meeting now concluded, the measures could put pressure on many politicians, particularly on the Christian right, to follow SBC's lead.

The convention's voting, especially on the issue of same-sex marriage, is significant given its reach: The SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with nearly 13 million members in 2024, according to the organization. It could be a powerful lobbying force in Washington, D.C.

What happened at the meeting?

During the convention, held in Dallas, the SBC voted on resolutions that included "whether to ban sports betting and pornography, as well as if the church should denounce abortion and transgender rights," said the Houston Chronicle. These ballots "call on politicians to establish laws on a number of items."

The SBC's resolutions for banning sports betting and pornography both passed, while one to prohibit women pastors failed. But the most consequential was the passage of a resolution "supporting a concerted effort to reverse Obergefell v. Hodges as the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage approaches its 10-year anniversary," said USA Today.

That resolution, which also passed without debate, says that politicians should "pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law — about marriage, sex, human life and family." It also says the country should recognize the "biological reality of male and female," among other phrasing related to gender identity. Notably, the same-sex measure doesn't "use the word 'ban,' but it left no room for legal same-sex marriage," said The Associated Press.

What happens next?

While the SBC's resolutions are nonbinding policy suggestions, they could go a long way toward influencing politicians. The "convention has long been a conservative trendsetter of national religious ideology and politics," said the Chronicle. A pair of SBC pastors notably "joined fellow conservative pastors to pray over President Donald Trump in recent months at the White House."

The SBC has made it clear that "evangelicals have long-term ambitions to dismantle an institution that many Americans now accept as a basic right," said The New York Times, even while acknowledging that same-sex marriage has "wide support" in the United States. It also has the same type of "pronatalism that has taken hold in many conservative circles, including those influencing the second Trump administration."

Many analysts believe that the SBC's resolutions are looking to the effort that "overturned the right to legal abortions as a possible blueprint for the new fight," said the Times. The SBC has held votes on same-sex topics before. But this was the "first time that the convention has voted to end the right to same-sex marriage," said The Guardian.

The SBC has notable political ties. Former Vice President Mike Pence spoke to the organization during Trump's first term and appeared at its 2024 convention. Trump looms large over the nation's Christian conservative base, and there is a "confidence that [Trump] will have their backs," said Kristin Du Mez, a Calvin University history professor with a focus on religion and politics, to the BBC. The SBC can "sense that there's been this shift, that there may be a window opening and that they think this is the right time to press this issue."

What happened

Southern Baptists, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, voted Tuesday to endorse resolutions to ban same-sex marriage and pornography across the U.S. and condemn sports betting. The votes opened the two-day annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, being held in Dallas.

Who said what

The same-sex nuptials measure is part of a "much larger resolution" that urges Christians to "embrace marriage and childbearing," criticizes "willful childlessness" and describes declining U.S. fertility rates as a crisis, The Associated Press said. It "doesn't use the word 'ban,' but it left no room for legal same-sex marriage," calling for the "overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family," and for the passage of laws limiting marriage to heterosexual unions.

Southern Baptists have "long opposed gay marriage" but this was the "first time its members have voted to work to legally end it," buoyed by the "successful effort that overturned the right to legal abortions," The New York Times said. The SBC is "often seen as a bellwether for conservative evangelicalism writ large," and the resolution's success "suggests that evangelicals have long-term ambitions to dismantle an institution that many Americans now accept as a basic right."

What next?

The 10,500 gathered SBC delegates, or "messengers," plan today to debate amendments to bar churches with women pastors and to abolish the denomination's policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, "which is staunchly conservative, but according to critics, not enough so," the AP said.

What happened

A deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court Thursday effectively upheld the Oklahoma Supreme Court's decision to bar overtly religious public charter schools. The 4-4 decision, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself, denied St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School public funding while avoiding setting a precedent for future cases. Legal experts suggested Chief Justice John Roberts likely sided with the court's three liberal justices in the terse, unsigned ruling.

Who said what

A ruling for St. Isidore, run by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and Diocese of Tulsa, would have "reshaped American education and blurred the line between church and state," allowing, "for the first time, direct and complete taxpayer funding to establish a faith-based charter school," The Washington Post said. The outcome "came as a surprise," The New York Times said, given the tenor of the oral arguments and the Roberts Court's embrace of "allowing religion a greater role in public life."

What next?

The court's one-sentence ruling was an "unsatisfying end to one of the term's most closely watched cases," The Associated Press said, but neither side in the case expected this to be the final word. "There will be another case just like this one and Justice Barrett will break the tie," Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Sitt (R) said on social media. "This is far from a settled issue."

Growing up, "the only white smoke young Robert Prevost ever saw" likely billowed from steelworks chimneys on Chicago's South Side, said Thomas Dyja in The Observer (U.K.). Last week, white smoke from the Vatican signaled that he'd been elected the first North American pope in the history of the Catholic Church. Adopting the name Leo XIV, the new pontiff addressed the crowds in St. Peter's Square first in Italian, then in Spanish, and concluded with a traditional blessing in Latin. But make no mistake, the new leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics is a "true son of Chicago." Known to friends as Bob, he's a White Sox fan from the "intimate and humane" city that gave the world Barack Obama, deep-dish pizza, and Playboy magazine. The cardinals' choice of an American has "stunned the Roman Catholic world," said Jason Horowitz in The New York Times. It breaks an "old taboo" against aligning papal authority with "the world's dominant superpower." But Prevost, a young but not too young 69, spent 20 years ministering to the poor in Peru, acquiring a Peruvian passport along the way, and the fact that he was born in a wealthy nation whose donors are "vital to the church's finances" may have ultimately worked in his favor.

The new pope is American, said Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark. "But do not—for one second—think this is about us." Within minutes of Leo's election, MAGA keyboard warriors had surfaced a social media account bearing Prevost's name that had reposted articles criticizing the Trump administration's deportation policies and declared Vice President JD Vance "wrong" for interpreting Catholic doctrine as opposing foreign aid. To MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, that made Leo a "WOKE MARXIST POPE" presumably elected to give Trump a new nemesis. In reality, Leo's message of peace—he used his first Sunday blessing to call for cease-fires in Gaza and Ukraine—and compassion for the downtrodden just means he's a Catholic. We'll never know exactly why the cardinals picked him, but trust me that "no one in the Sistine Chapel was thinking about Trump."

Really? said Jill Filipovic in The Daily Beast. The Trump years have seen the rise of a "hard-right Catholic opposition" to the values of empathy and tolerance that Pope Francis preached. Liberals shouldn't kid themselves that any pope will hold progressive views on abortion, say, or gay marriage—and Leo's past statements suggest he's a traditional conservative on those issues. But the choice of an American pope committed to "decency" was likely meant as a corrective to the harsh new "Catholicism of Vance." Actually, said Michael Brendan Dougherty in National Review, Leo has already walked back some of Francis' "modernist" reforms. They are "small things," but by speaking in "confident Latin" and choosing a traditional papal name, Leo has signaled to conservatives that he'll be "a major improvement" over progressive, emotive Francis.

Leo "is neither MAGA nor woke," said David French in The New York Times. But the example of an American running an ancient church could inspire our brash young nation to widen its "frame of reference" and stop elevating "the temporal over the eternal." For Americans, the pope has always been "unreachable and other-worldly," said Mollie Wilson O'Reilly in MSNBC.com. Now he's one of us, able to speak to us directly, with "no need for a translator." Sooner or later Pope Leo from Chicago, "flat vowels and all," may choose to engage with us, his countrymen. The question is whether Americans are "prepared to listen."

'The US needs a plan to stop Haiti's free fall'

The Washington Post editorial board

The "crisis in Haiti is worsening by the day, pushing the Western Hemisphere's poorest, most unfortunate country to the brink of collapse," says The Washington Post editorial board. The Trump administration has "sent contradictory signals, and taken actions that risk making the awful situation worse." Haiti "demands sustained engagement — aid for suffering civilians, more resources for the overstretched international security force, protection for those who have fled the violence, and efforts to find a political solution."

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'A worshipper is murdered in a French mosque. How can this be "just another crime?"'

Rokhaya Diallo at The Guardian

A Muslim man in France "was stabbed with a knife 57 times," but "in France, this death — and apparent targeting of a Muslim worshipper — has not been unequivocally understood as a hate crime," says Rokhaya Diallo. The "controversy around the case is a dismaying reminder of how institutionally Islamophobic France is." From the "outset we can see double standards." Why are "France's highest-ranking politicians so reluctant to call a horrendous assault a terrorist incident?"

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'Trump should heed his own warning about Qatar'

Jim Geraghty at the National Review

Turning the Qatari jet "into a plane that can meet the needs of flying the president will include its own considerable costs," says Jim Geraghty. If the "government went through all the time and expense to retrofit and upgrade P4-HBJ to the standards of Air Force One ... why would it then retire the plane?" The "president's word choices offer perfect irony, as the evidence shows that Qataris have been playing both sides in the war on terror for decades."

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'Build housing on public land? Yes, if it's done right.'

George W. McCarthy at The Boston Globe

America is in a "housing crisis, and public lands are a viable path for narrowing the gap between housing supply and demand," says George W. McCarthy. With "millions of acres under government ownership, the potential is significant — but so is the responsibility to use that land wisely." America "needs to focus on land that's not only buildable but also well-positioned to support housing — land near jobs, infrastructure, and schools where demand is high and development can move quickly."

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The Supreme Court appears ready to "bury what remains of church-state separation," said Mark Joseph Stern in Slate. During oral arguments, the court's conservative majority signaled sympathy toward a bid by two Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma to create the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. Oklahoma's Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, sued to block the opening of St. Isidore of Seville, arguing a religious public school would violate state law and the First Amendment's prohibition of government establishment of religion. But to the conservative justices, those arguments amount to little more than "anti-religious bigotry." Justice Brett Kavanaugh complained that Oklahoma's charter program was "open to all comers"—including schools focused on science and Chinese language—"except religion." If, as seems likely, the court compels Oklahoma to fund St. Isidore, it will "transform U.S. public education." Restrictions on religious charter schools in 46 states will be struck down, and every American will be forced "to subsidize the indoctrination of children into faiths they may not share."

Drummond's religion-establishment argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. The attorney general has warned that if St. Isidore is approved, Oklahoma taxpayers could be forced to fund religious charter schools that most "would consider reprehensible," including ones run by Islamist extremists. But if Oklahoma approves religious charters from multiple faiths, "how is that an 'establishment of religion'?" Precedent is on St. Isidore's side, said Michael Toth and Gavin Schiffres in National Review. The court ruled in 2022 that Maine's exclusion of sectarian schools from a state tuition program violated the First Amendment's ban on religious discrimination. "Withholding a public benefit from students solely because they attend a religiously affiliated charter school is no less discriminatory."

If St. Isidore prevails, "more difficult controversies await down the road," said Stephen L. Carter in Bloomberg. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wondered during arguments what will happen if a state-funded religious charter school boycotts part of a state-approved curriculum, such as the teaching of evolution. Will courts allow that under the free exercise clause? And what if a school like St. Isidore decides to block the admission of students from other faiths or those with gay parents? However the court decides in this case, it's clear "the issue of religion and education is far from resolved."

Pope Leo XIV may have broken a historic barrier by becoming the first pontiff from the United States, but his views on the Catholic Church could harken back to more traditional times. There are also some areas of the church's doctrine where he takes a more progressive stance, similar to his predecessor, Pope Francis.

Climate change

When it comes to climate change, Leo will "likely continue Francis' legacy as a steward of the environment," said Time. The new pope has railed against the misuse of environmental resources and as a cardinal he made a speech "calling for the church to take greater action against the destruction of the planet."

Leo has also proven himself informed on modern climate issues like greenhouse gases and electric vehicles. He has criticized the "'harmful' effects of technological development and reaffirmed the Vatican's commitments to protecting the environment," said NPR. He also cited Francis' "installation of solar panels and shift to electric vehicles" as a commitment to a clean-energy church.

LGBTQ+ rights

Leo is less progressive on LGBTQ+ issues than his predecessor, as Francis famously said of gay Catholics, "Who am I to judge?" But Leo has said that "media depictions of the modern family present a major challenge to the Catholic Church," according to The Washington Post.

He has spoken out against what the National Catholic Register has called "disordered sexual practices and ideologies," including same-sex relationships. When he was a bishop in Peru, Leo also "opposed a plan to teach transgenderism in schools." However, while he is more strict about the church's anti-LGBTQ+ stance, Leo has also taken a "somewhat neutral position on Fiducia Supplicans," a 2023 Catholic Church doctrine that "allowed for blessings of people in same-sex couples."

Abortion and women's health

The Catholic Church generally opposes expanded reproductive care, and Leo has "criticized abortion in his homilies, often tying the issue of abortion to euthanasia," said Newsweek. People "cannot build a just society if we discard the weakest — whether the child in the womb or the elderly in their frailty," Leo said in a 2019 speech as a cardinal. He was also a member of his university's anti-abortion club, the Post said.

Regarding other women's health issues like contraception and IVF, Leo "has not made clear his views," said The 19th. This is in line with Francis, who during his time as pope "typically avoided highlighting reproductive health."

Political stance

Leo has "shared posts on X about political issues for years, including criticism of the Trump administration's stances on immigration," said CBS News. This includes reposting an article that "criticized Vice President J.D. Vance's response to a question on immigration." Leo also spoke harshly of the first Trump administration's migrant policy several times as a cardinal.

The pope has previously voted in some Republican primaries in his home state of Illinois. However, he is "not registered as a member of a political party," as Illinois does not have party registrations, and his "voter history does not indicate whom he voted for or why," said ABC News.

Church sex abuse

One of the main criticisms of the new pope is that he reportedly swept allegations of church sexual abuse under the rug. Leo was "accused of 'disregarding allegations' of abuse against two priests in Peru" and has a "history of resisting disclosure of abuse information to the public," the watchdog group BishopAccountability told The Guardian.

As a cardinal, Leo "denounced clergy sexual abuse and urged victims to come forward," said USA Today, and reportedly helped shut down the Catholic movement Sodality of Christian Life following abuse allegations. But "survivors are worried he will not take a tough enough stance to eradicate abuse within the church."

Violence has once again broken out in fractured Syria between forces allied with the new Islamist regime and fighters from one of the country's religious minorities.

Dozens of members of the Druze community were killed in clashes with pro-government forces near Syria's southern border with Israel last week, according to the UK-based war monitoring service, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In response, Israel carried out strikes across Syria, including near the presidential palace in Damascus, saying it aimed to send "a clear message" to the interim government. "We will not allow [Syrian] forces to deploy south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community," Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu said. Syria's leadership, however, blamed "outlaw groups" for the violence, and called Israeli strikes a "dangerous escalation".

Who are the Druze?

A religious and ethnic Arab minority, originally an offshoot of Islam. The "unique" group dates back to the 11th century, following a belief system that incorporates elements of Islam, Hinduism and even classical Greek philosophy, said the Pew Research Center.

There are an estimated 700,000 Druze in Syria, making them the country's third-largest religious group; there are also around 230,000 in Lebanon and 25,000 in Jordan. Israel and the Palestinian territories are home to about 150,000 Druze, most of whom hold Israeli citizenship and are subject to its military draft, according to New Lines. Druze make up less than 2% of Israel's population but have "the highest rate of enlistment", with 80% signing up.

The situation is more "complicated" in the Golan Heights, a majority-Druze area annexed from Syria by Israel. There, most have repeatedly refused Israeli citizenship and "consider themselves Syrian".

How did they fare under Assad?

Bashar al-Assad's rule was mainly concentrated in big cities and "the coastal heartland of the Alawite sect" to which he belonged, said the BBC. But other regions were "partially or almost completely out of his control".

During Syria's civil war, the Druze were generally neutral: neither "fully aligned" with the Assad regime, nor "allied to opposition or jihadist groups", said New Lines. Many "refused military conscription" and some leaders even "negotiated local self-defence arrangements" independent of the army. Those militias defended the Druze from jihadists, such as Islamic State; some are still active today.

Why are they being targeted now?

When he appointed himself Syria's interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa vowed that religious minorities would be protected. But Syria has been bristling with sectarian tension. The regime has "already begun imposing 'Sunni Islamist' strictures on many aspects of society", said professor of Arab politics Joseph Massad on Middle East Eye. In March, security forces and allied groups reportedly massacred more than 1,700 civilians from the Alawite community.

The most recent clash with Druze fighters was "sparked by a voice recording attributed to a Druze man", said France24. He was "ostensibly cursing the Prophet Mohammed". The clip was widely shared online but Druze leaders say it was "fabricated".

Last week's violence suggested to the Druze that either Al-Sharaa "doesn't have control of all his allies, or that he unleashed them in a deliberate effort to crush a mounting insurgency", said New Lines. Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, the spiritual leader of Syria's Druze, has described the attacks on the community as "genocidal".

Why is Israel getting involved?

From a purely strategic viewpoint, maintaining the stability of the Druze is seen as "critical" for Israel's national security, said the Israeli non-profit Alma Research and Education Center. Weakened minority groups "often become clients of hostile jihadist forces". Israel's "hard-learned lesson" from the 7 October massacre is that "allowing a jihadist monster to grow unchecked at the border is unacceptable".

Israel's motivation is at least partially humanitarian, too. The Druze population in Israel is "deeply integrated into its national and defence fabric" and has "consistently demonstrated loyalty to the state". While the threat of a massacre of Syria's Druze "remains very real", ignoring pleas for help from across the border is "not an option".

But Israel's claims that its strikes will pressure Syrian authorities into protecting the Druze have been "met with cynicism" from Druze leaders, who know Israel "does not want a heavily armed Syria on its border", said Al Jazeera.

There is "mounting suspicion" that Israel is ultimately "angling for control of huge swathes of the south of Syria", said New Lines. Activists accuse Netanyahu of using Druze as "political pawns", leveraging their plight to justify Israel's increasing encroachment into Syria and "stoke internal resentment".

What happened

The College of Cardinals Thursday elected Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago native, as the Catholic Church's 267th pope. Prevost, 69, took the name Pope Leo XIV. He is the first pope from the U.S. — though he spent decades as a missionary, parish priest and bishop in Peru — and the first from the Augustinian religious order. His predecessor, Pope Francis, was the first pontiff from the Americas and the first Jesuit.

Who said what

"We have to look together how to be a missionary church, building bridges, dialogue, always open to receiving with open arms for everyone," Leo said in his first speech as pope, delivered in Italian and Spanish. "We want to be a synodal church, walking and always seeking peace, charity, closeness, especially to those who are suffering."

Francis made Prevost a cardinal and head of the Vatican's office overseeing bishops in 2023. And given their shared compassion for immigrants and the poor, Leo embodies the spirit of a "second Pope Francis," John Prevost, his older brother, told reporters.

The 133 cardinal electors "apparently wanted to keep moving in Francis' direction but with fewer detours and crashes," The New York Times said, so they picked a "mild-mannered pastor, moderate in tone but resolute in his defense of doctrine, one with deep Roman experience and governing chops" as former head of the centuries-old Order of St. Augustine. "He checked all the boxes," said veteran Vatican analyst John Allen.

Conservative Catholics drew hope from the traditional red garments Leo wore at his introduction and liberals are relieved at his similarities to Francis. Catholics from across the ideological spectrum approved of his name, which the Vatican confirmed was a nod to Pope Leo XIII, the late-19th century pontiff credited with developing Catholic social doctrine, a champion of the working class and the rosary and a critic of Marxism and laissez-faire capitalism.

What next?

Pope Leo is celebrating Mass mass at the Sistine Chapel Friday morning with the cardinals who elected him. He is scheduled to hold his first papal press conference on Monday.

'Why I'm still performing at Trump's Kennedy Center'

Lidiya Yankovskaya at The Washington Post

Some "audience members have chosen to shun" the Kennedy Center "regardless of the nature of the performance," but "such self-censorship is misguided," says Lidiya Yankovskaya. Art has the "capacity to change minds, shift cultures, challenge assumptions." Choosing "not to attend performances of content we support will only ensure that this content is not presented in the future." Americans "must continue to support the art that we want to see on the Kennedy Center stage."

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'I never thought I'd see an American pope. But Leo XIV is suited to our times.'

Mary Anna Mancuso at the Miami Herald

Pope Leo XIV "brings a lot to the papacy in terms of pastoral leadership and his missionary experience," says Mary Anna Mancuso. At a "time when the institutions feel more fragile than ever, the unity of the College of Cardinals reminded the world that some institutions remain strong and that we can lean on them." It "would be a mistake to let Leo XIV be defined by his critics." He is a "man elevated by faith and shaped by service."

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'Why in the world do people love golf?'

Dave Schilling at The Guardian

There is "no pastime more connected to the elasticity of time than golf," says Dave Schilling. It's a "game where futility is expected, where failure is right around the corner, and frustration is always simmering." The "most exciting part of golf is hitting the ball, but the rules encourage you to hit the damn thing less, not more." Most of the "time during a golf game, you're pondering, or worse yet, idly chit-chatting."

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'The US should focus on building robots, not ships'

Thomas Black at Bloomberg

The U.S. "long ago lost its dominance in shipbuilding," says Thomas Black. Of "all the battles to fight to create the conditions for a return of more manufacturing to America, shipbuilding is the steepest climb." Robotics is a "key enabler for a wide swath of manufacturing." It's "not too late to jump into the game and chip away at the foreign dominance of robot production." Resources "would be better spent making sure the U.S. is a leader in automation."

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For the first time in history, the one in five US adults who identify as Catholic will have a fellow American as their spiritual leader. Although Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, henceforth to be known as Pope Leo XIV, spent much of his religious career in Peru, he was born and raised in Chicago and holds citizenship of both countries.

President Donald Trump was quick to react to the announcement of the conclave's choice, posting on social media that it was "such an honour to realise that he is the first American Pope".

But many were quick to point out that the new Pope has a history of sharing posts online in support of racial justice and gun control, as well as comments critical of Trump and of his vice president, Catholic convert J.D. Vance, for their crackdown on migrants.

What did the commentators say?

Illinois voter registration data appears to suggest that Prevost voted in the Republican primaries in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2024, said Newsweek – although who he voted for is not public information. That a Catholic Pope would lean conservative is hardly a surprise, but "there's a twist", said Tim Stanley in The Telegraph. On "many bread-and-butter issues, he's probably a progressive".

During his two decades in Peru, Prevost worked with migrants and was "praised" for helping displaced Venezuelans. Even his choice of name is "telling": his 19th-century namesake, Leo XIII, "opposed socialism but supported trade unions", and wrote a "magnificent" text that analysed poverty and injustice. While conservative US Catholics exert "great influence in the judiciary" – six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic – they prefer to "talk about doctrine rather than social action".

Leo is "to the right of his predecessor" on same-sex marriage and transgender rights – but "do not for a minute think he wants to Make America Great Again", said Time. Indeed, he stands to be "an ideological check" on the strain of Maga Catholicism that has been "ascendant in Washington" in recent years.

The election of Prevost "clearly represents a rejection by the Vatican of the intense lobbying from rich Americans to install a pontiff sympathetic" to Trump. There is a "good chance" Trump and Pope Leo will "clash" on immigration, human rights and the environment – especially given the president's "obsession" with an agenda that would "co-opt Christianity in service of his political goals". Within hours of Leo's selection, the Maga-verse "seemed to be gunning" for him. Far-right activist and key Trump ally Laura Loomer posted: "WOKE MARXIST POPE."

To be fair, Leo's criticism of Trump "largely echoes" that of his predecessor, said The New York Times. Pope Francis also openly disagreed with Trump's deportation policies. And so far, the president "doesn't seem to be holding any grudges" against the new Pope. Vance, too, sent his "well wishes".

Leo's first appearance on the balcony of St Peter's will also "reassure more conservative traditional Catholics in the US", said The Irish Times. They will be "similarly reassured" by his views on homosexuality. In 2012 he "lamented that popular culture fostered 'sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel'", referencing the "homosexual lifestyle" as well as "alternative families comprised of same-sex partners". Indicators of "a strong social conscience" won't "warm the cockles of any 'Maga' hearts", but for traditional American Catholics, "order has been restored to their world".

"I think this will make a big difference to Catholics in America," Craig Burwell, of Connecticut, told Politico. "It'll draw them back to the church. It'll give them a stake."

What next?

For all that has been written since his appearance on the balcony of St Peter's, Pope Leo XIV is still "a complete unknown", said The New Yorker. But the world has time to get to know him: at the age of 69, "he may be Pope for the next quarter century".

The "underlying tension" between Leo and Trump will "colour global affairs and domestic politics" for years, said Time. Catholics make up roughly a quarter of the US electorate: "a higher level of civic engagement than other faiths". They are also "politically pliable": Joe Biden, only the second Catholic president, won 52% of the Catholic vote, but Trump won 59% last year.

The world is "suffering from Trump's American populism", Brandon Gallaher, lecturer in theology at the University of Exeter, told The Irish Times. Leo XIV "shows the possibility of another different American vision".

'America, América: A New History of the New World' by Greg Grandin

Greg Grandin's "stirring" new history puts forth a surprising argument, said Jennifer Szalai in The New York Times. While demonstrating across 737 pages that the story of the United States can't be separated from that of the nations and territories that share the Western Hemisphere, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Yale historian presents Latin America as a beacon of human rights that has found the U.S. to be an at-best contentious New World ally. Grandin isn't blind to the genocidal violence of Spain's and Portugal's conquistadors. But he claims that the horrors of the conquest prompted a moral revolution that Latin America has carried into the present in its commitment to universal equality and international cooperation. While Grandin's devotion to this theme "sometimes verges on the sentimental," he's "such a terrific writer and perceptive historian that I was swept along by his enthralling narrative."

The first true hero of Grandin's account is Bartolomé de las Casas, said Patrick Iber in The New Republic. The future Dominican priest landed in Hispaniola as a colonizer just 10 years after Christopher Columbus, but he evolved into a fierce advocate for the rights of Indigenous people, and the theological debate he initiated is "as plausible an origin story for global human rights and international law as any." Grandin's award-winning previous book, The End of the Myth, examined the role of the frontier in the U.S. expansionist mindset, and he argues here that Las Casas and his heirs had a starkly different understanding of the world because the Spanish had encountered occupied territories, not lands already emptied out by European-borne disease. Influenced by that experience, the Spanish-American republics that emerged in the decades after the American Revolution put far greater emphasis in their constitutions on providing universal goods. But while much of this neglected history should be shared, Grandin is so eager to paint the U.S. as the relative moral laggard that the conclusions he reaches are "plagued by exaggerations."

For starters, "the U.S. hasn't always been the bully of the hemisphere," said Ieva Jusionyte in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The nation truly was a good neighbor during Franklin Roosevelt's reign. Grandin acknowledges that, said Daniel Geary in The Irish Times. But he justifiably also revisits the many occasions when the U.S. has aided in the overthrow of democratically elected Latin American governments. His "extraordinarily ambitious" book doesn't provide the entire history of the New World, as its subtitle promises. Even such key events as 1846–48's Mexican-American War "happen offstage." But the story he tells is so dramatic and far-reaching that it "reads at times as the historical equivalent of the great epic novels of a Gabriel García Márquez."

'Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson' by Claire Hoffman

Back when Aimee Semple McPherson was a name known around the world, "genuine celebrity was rare," said Christine Rosen in The Wall Street Journal. Though she's not widely remembered today, the self-invented Pentecostal preacher was "an early and astute student of fame," which makes her a compelling subject for a writer as "lively" as Claire Hoffman. McPherson, who opened one of America's first mega-churches and pioneered the use of broadcast media to spread Christianity, has been the subject of biographies before. But Hoffman "gives us an incisive and devastating exploration of early-20th-century fame," rendering McPherson knowable in a new way. She seemed to be running every day of her life, and "we can now run along with her."

Sister, Sinner is "wonderfully thorough" until the story takes a crucial turn, said Casey Cep in The New Yorker. McPherson, we learn, was born in Ontario in 1890, converted to Pentecostalism just before marrying a traveling preacher at 17, and by 20 was preaching on the ship that carried her home from Hong Kong as a widow. Feeling a call to make preaching a career, she landed first in Florida, then Los Angeles, and built a following. Soon, she was preaching to 7,000 people every day, and she was at the peak of her influence at age 35 when she went missing and was presumed dead. A month later, she reappeared at the Mexican border, claiming she'd been kidnapped. But while Hoffman describes the resulting legal and media circus, she refuses to conclude that the story was a lie. "As a result, by the end of this otherwise magnificent biography, McPherson has once again managed to disappear."

McPherson didn't then quit her calling, said Carolyn Kellogg in the Los Angeles Times. She continued to draw adoring crowds and poured church money into relief efforts during the Great Depression. "Something, however, had deeply changed," and "this is where nonfiction can be delightfully tantalizing—we are left to imagine why." Why did her mother split with her? Why did her sermons become darker? Back then, her story was "a must-read thrill ride." With Sister, Sinner, "it is again today."

Attention "left-wing culture warriors," said Ed Whelan in National Review: Religious families will not accept indoctrination. At the Supreme Court last week, a group of Christian and Muslim parents in a Maryland school district asserted the right to opt their elementary-school-age children out of lessons that use books celebrating same-sex relationships and a transgender child. The lessons, they argued, contradicted the religious teachings they wanted to pass on to their children. They "haven't challenged the curriculum itself" or promoted book banning; they've just asked the district to revert to its pre-2022 policy of allowing opt-outs. In response, the parents say, board members accused them of "hatred" and "aligning with racist xenophobes." If that's true, it's "inexcusable," said Stephen L. Carter in Bloomberg. One group's values should not take automatic precedence over another's, and "a humble respect for diversity is better than a cold and unblinking exercise of authority." That's why a majority of justices are likely to rule in the parents' favor.

The parents' case is "part of a larger campaign," said Robyn Nicole Sanders in Slate. Religious conservatives are waging a political battle "to weaponize parental control as a tool of exclusion"— to define exposure to different ideas and people as a moral offense. The point of teaching such material is to prepare children for a pluralistic society in which LGBTQ people exist, can legally marry, and form families. What if the court decides "parental conscience can trigger opt-outs" from any book or lesson they don't like? Would that include evolution or climate change? Texts containing photos of girls without head coverings? At that point, "the very premise of a shared public education begins to fracture."

As a parent in the district, "I deeply resent the whole mess," said Megan K. Stack in The New York Times. I'm skeptical of the board's claims that allowing opt-outs would be logistically complicated and would do emotional damage to children with same-sex parents or family members. But the religious parents, too, have done plenty of grandstanding by insisting "they can't properly rear their children in faith if the kids get exposed to a few picture books." In the modern, online world, kids will sooner or later be exposed to everything. This divisive battle has been "a demoralizing spectacle" of mutual intolerance and disrespect. Whatever the court decides, "it's already too late for our community to win."