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The legacy of a compassionate reformist pope

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The legacy of a compassionate reformist pope

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It was a mark of the humanity that typified his papacy that Pope Francis appeared in public to deliver Easter blessings and tour St Peter’s Square when his voice and body were clearly failing — less than 24 hours before his passing. Only weeks after he came close to death in hospital with double pneumonia, the pope was able to end his ministry as it began: among the people. Catholics and many non-Catholics will mourn a compassionate reformer who tried to modernise his church, even if the results fell short of what his most progressive supporters hoped for.

His modesty and determination to be a voice for the poor and marginalised was one of several things that marked him out from many predecessors. The first non-European pope for more than 1,000 years, and first from the Americas, chose to live not in the lavish papal apartment but in a two-room Vatican guesthouse. Not for nothing did he take the name of St Francis of Assisi, known for his humility.

While Francis did not change doctrine on questions of sexuality, faith and marriage, he shifted the tone and language of discussion to emphasise the need for tolerance and understanding. His early comment in response to a question about the presence of gay priests in the church, “Who am I to judge?” opened the way to his 2023 approval of informal blessings for same-sex couples. His 2016 exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, raised the possibility of allowing some divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. After a worldwide consultation Francis launched with the faithful — to the resentment of traditionalists — the concluding document recommended broadening the role of women and lay people in the church.

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Pope Francis tours St Peter’s Square on the popemobile at the end of the Holy Mass on Sunday. His modesty and determination to be a voice for the poor and marginalised marked him out from many predecessors © Marco Iacobucci/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

In a church struggling for relevance in the modern world, Francis tried, too, to make it more of a moral voice on issues beyond the family and the bedroom. In a 2015 encyclical he sought to redefine climate change in terms of religion and faith, warning that it was the product of the developed world’s addiction to consumption while disproportionately affecting the world’s poor. He made outspoken interventions in support of migrants, amid hardening US and European attitudes against irregular migration, and spoke of his distress over the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Ultimately, however, Francis failed to translate his personal magnetism into reforms that settled key questions such as the ordination of women or married priests, or which arrested the church’s decline in Europe and North America. He made some errors of judgment on individuals, including some accused of serious crimes such as financial demeanours or sexual abuse in the church — a scourge some will feel he did not do enough to lay to rest. He also left the church facing significant financial strains that need to be addressed.

The pope managed to irk both liberals, by failing to deliver decisive change, and conservatives who accused him nonetheless of undermining traditional teachings. Those divisions will carry into what is set to be a hard-fought contest for his succession. Today’s Catholic church is increasingly, in terms of membership, one of the global south, and cardinals will face pressure to elect another pope from beyond Europe, and one sensitive to issues of poverty and the environment. Yet many church leaders, and adherents, from the global south are also socially conservative — in contrast to some more liberal-minded followers in wealthier countries.

The next pope, whatever his background or talents, may find it little easier to resolve the deep-seated questions facing Catholicism. But Pope Francis should be remembered for the modernising progress he made and for attempting to live out Gospel teachings on siding with the needy and the oppressed. His personal example was perhaps his most powerful legacy.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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