World
In Augustinian Order, Pope Leo XIV Found Unity, Charity and ‘Eternal Friendship’
The cellphone of the leader of the Order of St. Augustine, the Rev. Alejandro Moral Antón, buzzed for what seemed like the hundredth time, and he jumped. He had been up since 2:30 a.m. fielding calls, trying to explain to people across the globe how his order, the one that formed Pope Leo XIV, would shape the papacy.
This time, it was his dentist. He had missed an appointment.
“You know what’s happening?” he told the dentist on Monday afternoon in Rome. “The new pope is an Augustinian!”
The world’s sudden interest in the small order of fewer than 3,000 members had forced Father Moral Antón, an affable, 69-year-old Spaniard, to distill Augustinians’ principles and spiritual ideals to their essence. Charity, truth and unity, he recited in Latin and translated into Spanish.
Pope Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, is an American with Peruvian citizenship, but his identity may have been most deeply molded by his connection to the Augustinians, which began when he was 14 and led to his ordination in 1982 as an Augustinian priest. He moved to Peru as an Augustinian missionary and eventually ran the order for 12 years from Rome. In that position, he developed extensive international connections that helped raise his profile last week in the conclave of cardinals who elected him.
As the first Augustinian friar to become pope, Leo is expected by Augustinians to emphasize missionary outreach and the importance of listening widely before making decisions, both central to the Augustinian way of life.
“The Holy Father will certainly be inspired by this search for communion and dialogue,” said Pierantonio Piatti, a historian of Augustinians with the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, a Vatican office. That would mesh with the concept of “synodality,” fulfilling Francis’ vision of a church that brings bishops and lay people together to make big decisions.
“The other great element of Augustinian spirituality,” Dr. Piatti added, is a “search for balance between action and contemplation, between contemplation and action.”
In part because of their small size, Augustinian priests are a tight-knit community around the world, and many have encountered Leo over the years.
“Even when we disagree on something like politics, we have no trouble talking to one another,” said Father Allan Fitzgerald, 84, an Augustinian priest and longtime professor at Villanova University northwest of Philadelphia, which Leo graduated from in 1977. “I think we are, in some ways, an image of the U.S. There is certainly a whole swath of us that is to one side and to the other. Even if we can’t talk directly about politics, we are still able to talk about things that matter.”
The order was founded in 1244, when Pope Innocent IV united groups of hermits in service to the church as a community of friars. The group committed to a lifestyle of poverty, along with a mix of contemplation and pastoral service.
Augustinians take their name from one of Christianity’s most important early theologians, Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, who was born in what is now Algeria in the fourth century. He is perhaps most famous for an autobiographical work called “Confessions,” which in part details his conversion to Christianity after an immoral youth.
The order’s place in the broader Roman Catholic Church was threatened by one of its most prominent 16th-century members, Martin Luther, whose calls for reform in the church ended up leading to the Protestant Reformation.
Augustine also wrote a guide to religious life that became the cornerstone of the Augustinian order. Its members commit to “live together in harmony, being of one mind and one heart on the way to God.” Leo’s new coat of arms reflects that heritage, displaying the Latin motto “In illo uno unum,” or “In the One, we are one.”
Augustinians are generally far less known compared with larger groups like the Jesuits and Franciscans. Part of that has to do with the personality and style of the orders, Father Fitzgerald said.
“If you are a Jesuit, you are very good at telling people who you are,” he said. “Augustinians are not great at telling people who we are. I think it is unusual for us to be self-promoting.”
In the years after he became head, or prior general, of the order in 2001, Leo tried to share on a global stage the ideas and practices for missionary outreach that he had developed in Peru.
He outlined his theological underpinnings in a speech in Rome in 2023. Mission is a means of carrying out the church’s fundamental duty of evangelization, he said. Without this perspective, charity work by the church becomes little more than “humanitarian action,” which, while important, will not be distinctively Christian.
“On the contrary, when we help each other to constantly remind ourselves that our primary mission is evangelization, it does not matter whether our resources are small or large because the fundamental thing is already given,” he said.
“To evangelize means, among other things, to be willing to leave the comfort zones, the comfortable bourgeois life,” he said, in an apparent nod to his life-changing decision to leave his life in the United States for a missionary posting in northwestern Peru in 1985. That background appears to have figured in the cardinals’ deliberations during the conclave, since missionary outreach was a key element of Francis’ vision.
Leo once told the Italian broadcaster RAI that he had met “my religious family, the Augustinians,” as a teenager, prompting his decision to leave Chicago for an Augustinian junior-seminary boarding school in Michigan. There, he said, he got to learn about “the importance of friendship, the importance of life in community.”
“I believe it is very important to promote communion in the church,” Leo explained in 2023 to Vatican News. “As an Augustinian, for me promoting unity and communion is fundamental.”
On Saturday, Leo made an unannounced visit to Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano, an Augustinian sanctuary outside Rome. On Monday, he invoked St. Augustine in remarks to journalists gathered in Vatican City, saying that the present times were challenging, difficult to navigate and not easy to recount to the public.
“They demand that each one of us, in our different roles and services, never give in to mediocrity,” he said. “St. Augustine reminds of this when he said: ‘Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times.’”
He cited one of the saint’s sermons that alluded to how people can choose to make the most of tough circumstances, Father Moral Antón said: “We are the ones who have to live a good life to change the times.”
“We need to stop and reflect,” he added. “Because we live well, we eat well, we have pleasures, but are you happy? And people say, ‘I’m not happy.’ Let’s look, then, at where happiness lies — within — and then change.”
Father Moral Antón, who missed his dental appointment on Monday, was sitting in a small room in the Augustinian College of St. Monica, on a hillside across the street from St. Peter’s Basilica, where the new pope has played tennis for years on a court with a view of the iconic dome. Father Moral Antón and Leo, who are the same age, studied together in the college decades ago; the father was Leo’s deputy when he ran the order and succeeded him in the top job.
In the days since Leo became pope, Augustinian friars have shared stories of meeting him during his past travels. One vicar in Kenya sent Father Moral Antón photos of a trip he and Leo took to the African country many years ago.
“Being an Augustinian means being pretty open,” Father Moral Antón said, adding that, compared to other orders, theirs does not have “very rigid norms.”
“It’s about eternal friendship, friends, wanting to walk with friends and find truth with friends,” he said. “Wanting to live in the world, to live life — but with friends, with people who love you, with whom you love.”
“It is not always something you find,” he added, “but, well, that’s the ideal.”
Emma Bubola, Elizabeth Dias and Jason Horowitz contributed reporting.
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A 1,000-strong “dark fleet” of rogue oil tankers skirting sanctions has emerged as a new target for the U.S. and Ukraine, a senior maritime intelligence analyst claims.
Michelle Wiese Bockmann warned the aging fleet poses geopolitical risks and threats of $1 billion oil spills, with the recent U.S. seizures in Venezuela and Ukrainian drone strikes in the Black Sea marking a turning point for both nations in their efforts.
“There are about 1,000 vessels worldwide that are trading sanctioned crude tankers containing sanctioned Iranian, Venezuelan and Russian oil,” Bockmann told Fox News Digital.
“These vessels are a lifeline for these regimes, because they’re used for shipping oil to fund the war in Ukraine, and also give money to the illicit Maduro regime,” she added.
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U.S. seized the Skipper, a Venezuelan oil tanker. ( Planet Labs PBC/Reuters)
“This is a brand-new problem for the U.S., and now Ukraine has signaled they are going to target these vessels the same way,” she said. “There is a new strategy to deal with this dark fleet, which is the lifeline of sanctioned oil revenues, and now under attack by the U.S. and Ukraine. The strategy is all to counter what we call gray-zone aggression.”
US ESCALATION WITH MADURO HALTS DEPORTATION FLIGHTS TO VENEZUELA
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was questioned about the U.S. seizing an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. (Planet Labs PBC/Handout via Reuters )
Recent Ukrainian naval drone strikes have disabled several tankers in the Black Sea, including the Dashan, part of Russia’s so-called shadow fleet that Ukraine says helps Moscow export oil in defiance of sanctions, according to Reuters.
“It is dangerous and could be interpreted as a form of gray-zone aggression in order to continue to keep oil revenue flowing,” Bockmann said.
“This is all a billion-dollar oil spill catastrophe waiting to happen,” she added, pointing to the environmental and navigational risks posed by poorly maintained, uninsured ships.
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Footage of the Dashan tanker, purportedly part of the Russian shadow fleet hit by Ukraine. (Security Service Official/Handout via Reuters)
She said a subset of “about 350 to 400 vessels at any one time are not only sanctioned but falsely flying flags, which is dangerous,” because false registration leaves vessels stateless and uninsured, putting crews at risk.
“This is a huge issue for maritime safety, it’s a menace to the environment, and it entails crew welfare,” Bockmann said.
These vessels, she said, are typically “elderly” and used solely for sanctioned oil trades. Many also “manipulate AIS” to show they are in one place when they are actually elsewhere.
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Dashan, a tanker from Russia’s shadow fleet, transits the Bosphorus en route to the Black Sea in Istanbul. (Yoruk Isik/Reuters)
“They use false flagging, but also, spoofing and manipulating its AIS to show it’s in one place when it’s not. These vessels have also gone to fraudulent registries that don’t exist, which means they have no insurance,” she said. “Their certificates of seaworthiness are invalid, and they have relied on international maritime conventions to have what’s called the right of innocent passage so they can’t get intercepted.”
Bockmann said U.S. forces have used legal tools including Article 110 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows boarding of stateless vessels, to stop these ships.
“It’s my belief that they used Article 110, and they got on board that vessel, and they were absolutely entitled to remove that vessel from global trade,” she said.
VENEZUELA ACCUSES US OF ‘PIRACY’ AFTER SEIZING MASSIVE OIL TANKER
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a roundtable meeting on Antifa with President Donald Trump in the State Dining Room at the White House, on Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Evan Vucci/AP)
In the Caribbean, U.S. forces recently seized the tanker Skipper, sanctioned in 2022 and found to be masking its location, under a federal warrant as part of a broader campaign to disrupt illicit oil shipping.
“The recent Venezuelan tanker was carrying 1.8 million barrels of oil uninsured, so that’s a billion-dollar maritime disaster waiting to happen,” Bockmann said.
As reported by Fox News Digital, Dec. 12 saw Attorney General Pam Bondi frame the U.S. seizure of a Venezuelan crude tanker as a sanctions-enforcement action rooted in a federal court warrant.
Meanwhile, in the Black Sea, Ukraine targeted multiple alleged “shadow fleet” tankers with sea drones, according to Reuters.
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“The three tankers that have been targeted by Ukraine are all in ballast, which means that they weren’t carrying oil,” Bockmann said.
“That was carefully chosen, and they were also falsely flagged, just like in the recent case of the three tankers attacked in Ukraine. That flag was Gambia. In the U.S. case of Skipper, the flag was Guyana,” Bockmann said.
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips contributed to this report.
As the curtain falls on 2025, policymakers in Brussels have yet to decisively counter the negative economic impacts of two major developments: the trade deal struck between the European Union and the United States this summer, and President Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”, a mammoth piece of domestic legislation with global economic implications.
The EU’s slow progress toward improving relative business conditions at such a volatile moment has left investors frustrated and looking elsewhere.
According to a report published this week by the European Round Table for Industry, the leaders of the bloc’s industrial giants are “alarmed at the lack of urgency in delivering on Draghi and Letta’s bold reforms to restore the business case for investing in Europe.”
The report also points to a survey of CEOs conducted in October, which shows that only 55% expect to stick to their investment plans. Even worse, a mere 8% intend to invest more in Europe than they planned to six months prior, in contrast with the 38% who will either invest less than previously intended or have put decisions on hold.
And most tellingly, the US now attracts more investment than originally planned by 45% of respondents.
The ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach
The Trump administration’s combination of supply-side economics and protectionism has converted the necessity of avoiding US tariffs into a massive financial incentive for foreign companies and multinationals to invest in the United States directly.
The Big Beautiful Bill, which Trump signed into law in July, formalised huge tax breaks and effectively guaranteed incentives to shift investments across the Atlantic. Namely, the 100% bonus depreciation for new machinery and factories, as well as the 100% immediate expensing of domestic research and development (R&D) costs, mitigating the expenses of moving production and innovation to the US.
Companies have until 1 January 2026 to finalize their decisions and collect retroactive benefits for capital deployed in 2025, but the conditions will remain the same next year.
To compound the EU’s growing inability to compete, the heavily criticised EU-US trade deal was agreed in the same month. The agreement de-escalated the transatlantic trade war of 2025 but it levied a 15% tariff on the vast majority of the EU’s industrial exports to the US, with an exemption from duties for most US-made goods bound for the EU market.
In addition, the EU committed to spending over €640 billion in US energy, investing more than €500 billion in the US economy and buying around €35 billion worth of US-made AI chips, until the end of President Trump’s mandate. Meanwhile, the United States made no similar pledges.
As for corporations, the choice became simple: relocate investment to the US, avoid the tariff and claim massive tax deductions.
The innovation gap in numbers
The R&D siphon is the most critical threat to Europe’s future competitiveness, as the Trump administration’s new incentives pull core innovation to the US.
In the most innovative industries, such as the AI and healthcare sectors, the numbers for 2025 already demonstrate the chasm between the EU and the US.
In the first three quarters of this year, private investment flowing into US AI companies exceeded €100 billion, with the US capturing over 80% of global AI funding. In contrast, the entire EU attracted just shy of €7 billion, according to the widely read State of AI Report 2025.
This severe 15-to-1 funding deficit means the technological future is being built and scaled primarily outside the EU, something that has been recognised by the European Parliament.
Likewise, the EU is aiming to achieve 20% market share in semiconductor manufacturing by 2030, as outlined in the Chips Act, but experts say such a goal is unlikely given that Europe is among the slowest growers in the sector year-on-year.
Furthermore, the EU is even falling behind on AI adoption among young users, according to a new survey by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
As for the pharmaceutical industry, CEOs sent a stark warning to President von der Leyen back in April that “unless Europe delivers rapid, radical policy change then pharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing is increasingly likely to be directed towards the US.”
In the following weeks, fuelled by the fear of the ongoing transatlantic trade war at the time and frustration with the European regulatory scene, the third largest company in Europe by market capitalization, the Swiss-based Roche, committed over €40 billion in US investment over the next five years. Likewise, the French multinational Sanofi announced an investment of €17 billion to expand manufacturing in the US through 2030.
In July, as the Big Beautiful Bill and the EU-US trade deal were being agreed, the British-Swedish company AstraZeneca also declared investing over €40 billion in the US over the next five years, including the construction of a chronic disease research centre in the state of Virginia, the company’s largest single investment in a facility to date.
In November, the White House announced a large-scale agreement between two pharmaceutical rivals, the American manufacturer Eli Lilly, and the Danish corporation Novo Nordisk, known for pioneering the prescription drug for type 2 diabetes, Ozempic, which has also been widely used off-label for weight loss.
The two companies agreed a strategy to reduce the prices of several medications for Americans and announced new investments in the US, with Novo Nordisk committing roughly €8.5 billion to expand US manufacturing capacity. In exchange, the Danish company is expected to receive a three-year exemption from US tariffs, among other benefits.
In total, the European pharmaceutical industry has pledged more than €100 billion for US expansion in 2025 alone with multi-year commitments.
The scramble to deregulate
The pressure applied by the US is evident as this year has seen the European Commission pivot to an aggressive deregulation agenda.
In response to a request from the European Council, six simplification proposals, referred to as “omnibuses”, have been presented since February covering energy, finance, agriculture, technology, defence and chemicals.
Notably, the so-called Digital Omnibus was introduced in November, and it includes delays to provisions of the AI Act and modifications to the GDPR.
These initiatives aim to rapidly cut red tape and reduce bureaucratic costs for European businesses in an attempt to stem the outflow of talent and capital. However, the proposed measures are still facing legislative scrutiny, as well as administrative oversight and political backlash from privacy and climate advocates, among others.
It was only this week that an agreement was finally reached on the first omnibus, another sign that the EU is still far from offering the immediate financial certainty of minimising or avoiding US tariffs while benefiting from President Trump’s policies where possible.
The numbers reveal the plain economic truth: while the EU debates the fine print of deregulation, the investment in innovation is already being decisively relocated.
Star Dakota Johnson made a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live” this week, playing the mysterious “Madeline” during Lily Allen‘s performance of that track. The song was Allen’s second of the night.
During the performance, Johnson was mostly hidden behind a screen through the song, as Allen sang about the mistress. But Johnson performed the spoken word portion of the song, which appears on Allen’s album “West End Girl.” In the track, Allen notes that she and her signficant other “had an arrangement: Be discreet and don’t be blatant. And there had to be payment. It had to be with strangers. But you’re not a stranger, Madeline.”
Later in the song, “Madeline” explains her side of the story via texts to Allen: “I hate that you’re in so much pain right now. I really don’t wanna be the cause of any upset. He told me that you were aware this was going on and that he had your full consent. If he’s lying about that, then please let me know. Because I have my own feelings about dishonesty. Lies are not something that I wanna get caught up in. You can reach out to me any time, by the way. If you need any more details or you just need to vent or anything. Love and light, Madeline.”
After reading those lines, Johnson came out from behind the curtain and walked up to Allen — and gave her a quick kiss.
“Madeline” is one of the standout tracks from Allen’s new album “West End Girl,” and has led to much speculation over who the mysterious pseudonym is (or might be a composite of). At least one person has told the press that she is “Madeline,” although Allen has said that it’s actually a composite of several women.
For her first “SNL” number, Allen performed “Sleepwalking” from “West End Girl,” in a bedroom set under a neon sign. Given the saucy lyrics, Allen did have to censor herself, omitting the lyric, “Why aren’t we fucking, baby?” (She did the same thing with “Madeline,” avoiding part of the line “I’m not convinced that he didn’t fuck you in our house.”)
Allen appeared on “Saturday Night Live” to promote “West End Girl,” which has been met with wide acclaim for its brutal honesty and craftsmanship. The album addresses her split from “Stranger Things” star David Harbour, without ever mentioning him by name. (As characterized through scathing lyrics on songs such as “Pussy Palace,” “Sleepwalking” and “Madeline.”)
In his Variety review, Chris Willman called “West End Girl” a contender for album of the year. He wrote of “savoring every confessional line and wondering what the hell she was going to tell us in the next one to top it. It’s the pleasure of listening to a master storyteller who makes your jaw drop by seeming to have spilled all the tea almost at the outset, and then the tea just keeps on coming. Not since Boston in 1773, maybe, has anyone dumped it this massively, or this fulfillingly.”
“West End Girl” repped Allen’s first album release since 2018. Allen has announced a tour next March to support the album, which marks Allen’s first time touring since 2019.
This is Allen’s second time on “Saturday Night Live,” following an appearance on the Feb. 3, 2007 episode hosted by Drew Barrymore. During that episode, Allen performed the tracks “Smile” and “LDN” from her debut album “Alright, Still.”
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