The Rev. Gosbert Rwezahura opened Mass on Sunday morning by saying what everyone in the pews was thinking. “Habemus papam!” he exclaimed at Christ Our Savior Parish in South Holland, Ill. Beaming, he added, “He is one of our own!”
It was the first Sunday in American history with an American pope seated on the throne of St. Peter in Rome. At parishes across the country, Catholics filed into the pews with a sense of wonder, hope and pride over Pope Leo XIV.
At Christ Our Savior, the pride was personal: Today’s parish was formed from others in the area around the South Side of Chicago that includes a now-closed church where the pope attended as a child.
Father Rwezahura put it simply: “We are the home parish of the pope!”
“I’m so full and so proud, I don’t know what to do,” said Janice I. Sims, 75. “I’m definitely blessed because I lived long enough to see it happen.”
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Others there traded anecdotes about brushes with the future pope, back when he was known as Robert Prevost: the music director who played at a wedding he officiated, the deacon who went to high school where his mother was the school librarian.
At the standing-room-only 10:30 a.m. Mass at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, the Rev. Ton Nguyen began his homily by exclaiming “Viva Papa Leo the 14th!” The congregation applauded. Outside the church, yellow and white bunting hung in celebration.
“My heart is overwhelmed with joy that we have an American Pope, and he is from Chicago,” Father Nguyen said.
Catholics at other services around the country were no less ebullient and were starting to think ahead to their hopes for the new papacy. Perhaps Leo could attract more young people to church, inspire more men to become priests or help unify an often fractious Catholic population in his home country. At 69, he could lead the church for decades.
“He already won over the hearts of the whole world,” said Amelia Coto, 70, who was attending a Spanish-language Mass at Gesù Catholic Church in downtown Miami. “We were without a father, but now God gave us this father we desired so much.”
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Ms. Coto is from Honduras, and she teared up when talking about Leo. Like others at Spanish-language Masses in Miami on Sunday, she expressed optimism that a Spanish-speaking pope who lived for decades in South America might be able to sway American immigration policy.
“I hope his arrival will help this new president change, stop all those deportations that Trump is doing to Latinos,” she said.
In New Orleans, the pope’s mother’s family had roots in the Black Creole community, where African, Caribbean and French influences blend. In the city this week, social media feeds were overloaded with images of the pope’s face superimposed in everyday New Orleans scenes. Eating a bowl of gumbo. Showing off his footwork in a second-line parade. Popping his head out of a front door to ask, “How’s your mama and dem?”
Angela Rattler, 69, was attending Mass on Sunday at Corpus Christi-Epiphany Catholic Church in the Seventh Ward. When she first heard the pope speak, tears flowed down her face, she said. “He appears to be such a humble man.”
It was Mother’s Day, which is not a Christian holiday but one where church attendance is usually high anyway. Still, the pews seemed especially full at some parishes.
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At St. Ann Parish in Coppell, Texas, all 1,300 seats inside were filled, along with a few hundred people seated in a courtyard at Sunday’s 10 a.m. Mass. The Rev. Edwin Leonard planned a homily that emphasized the vocation of motherhood. But then “the Holy Spirit did a beautiful thing,” he told his congregation, and another topic felt more fitting.
“So it is on Mother’s Day that I’m going to speak about the Holy Father,” Father Leonard said.
Among traditionalists, who had a rocky relationship with the open and informal Pope Francis, some wondered whether Pope Leo might reopen broader access to the traditional Latin Mass. Pope Francis cracked down on the traditional Mass, celebrated by Catholics around the world until the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
At a Latin Mass at St. Damien Catholic Church in Edmond, Okla., worshipers expressed cautious optimism about the prospect. “There is no way to be sure what he’ll do,” the Rev. Joseph Portzer said in his homily. “But we do see that some of the first words that he said were to talk about unity in the church.”
Father Portzer was among those who found the pope’s American identity intriguing. “We will have an unusual experience being governed by someone who thinks like an American, a Midwestern American,” he said. “It’s going to mean a lot to us to have an American mind-set governing the church.”
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For him, that meant a practicality in governing and the possibility that “we will be able, as well, to understand the way he thinks.”
When Father Leonard in Texas heard the new pope’s name on Thursday, the first thing he did was to look up whether he had political or ideological leanings, he told his congregation.
“Mea culpa,” he said in the only Latin words heard during the Mass. “We should not try to fit our pope into our American liberal or conservative camps. If you did that, shame on us.”
Back at Christ Our Savior in the south suburbs of Chicago, a large population of immigrants from Nigeria worshiped along with white and Black families who have lived on the South Side for decades. The pope’s home parish is now a place that in many ways reflects the global church that its favorite son is now charged with leading. Father Rwezahura is from Tanzania, and the deacon serving with him on the altar on Sunday, Mel Stasinski, has lived in Chicago his whole life.
United by a faith shared by 1.4 billion Catholics around the world, they were also connected by their sheer joy on Sunday. As Diane Sheeran, 70, described how she felt when she got the news about Leo: “I had a grin for two days.”
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Reporting was contributed by Robert Chiarito in Chicago; Mary Beth Gahan in Coppell, Texas; Breena Kerr in Edmond, Okla.; Katy Reckdahl in New Orleans; and Verónica Zaragovia in Miami.
Your investigation of these allegations is consistent with the IG’s mission to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies, and can help determine if politically connected crypto interests are undermining our national security. As Congress considers legislation on the market structure for digital assets, we must ensure that cryptocurrencies like USD1 are not providing the President and senior officials with the ability to line their pockets at the expense of the public interest.
The following facts have been reported in multiple outlets regarding Mr. Witkoff:
• Mr. Witkoff’s son Zach Witkoff is the CEO of World Liberty Financial (WLF), which the President’s family owns a majority stake in.³
• Beginning in January, one of Sheikh Tahnoon’s employees, Fiacc Larkin, joined WLF as the “chief strategic advisor” while continuing to work at G42, an AI investment firm owned by Sheikh Tahnoon that, according to the U.S. intelligence community, works closely with Chinese military companies.4
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On May 1, 2025, Zach Witkoff announced that MGX, a state-owned investment firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, had agreed to use a WLF-issued stablecoin, USD1, to make a $2 billion investment in Binance. As a result of this deal, WLF stands to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction fees from MGX, and more from the returns on any investments it makes with the $2 billion deposit.³
As of August, Mr. Witkoff maintained a financial interest in WLF and thus stands to personally benefit from his son’s business dealings with the UAE.6 Nevertheless, he did not recuse himself from deliberations regarding the UAE, which may violate federal ethics law.
The following facts have been reported about Mr. Sacks:
●
•
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He is a special government employee who continues to serve as a “general partner” at his venture capital fund, Craft Ventures.
8
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, an Emirati sovereign wealth fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, was an early investor in Craft Ventures and continues to hold an investment in the fund.
In addition, Craft Ventures is invested in BitGo, which has partnered with WLF to provide the technical infrastructure for USD1. If BitGo’s valuation grows, based on the UAE’s investment into USD1, Mr. Sacks and his firm stand to benefit.
3 Yahoo Finance, “Trump family reportedly has a 60% stake in the World Liberty Financial,” Anand Sinha, March 31, 2025,
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-family-reportedly-60-stake-172742661.html.
4 New York Times, “Inside U.S. Efforts to Untangle an A.I. Giant’s Ties to China,” Mark Mazzetti and Edward
Wong, Nov. 27, 2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/11/27/us/politics/ai-us-uae-china-security-g42.html.
5 New York Times, “At a Dubai Conference, Trump’s Conflicts Take Center Stage,” David Yaffe-Bellany, May 1, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/us/politics/trump-cryptocurrency-usd1-dubai-conference-
announcement.html.
6U.S Office of Government Ethics, Form 278e for Steven C. Witkoff, August 13, 2025, p. 23, https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/090d0de07e1d2fdf/bbf02867-full.pdf.
18 U.S.C. § 208.
8 White House, “Limited Waiver Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 208(b)(1) Regarding A.I. Assets,” June 2025,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/David-Sacks.pdf.
Nigel Farage has refused to criticise Donald Trump’s claims that paracetamol, sold in the US as Tylenol, could cause autism, insisting “science is never settled” and he would never “side with” medical experts.
The Reform UK leader said he had “no idea” if the US president was right to tell pregnant women to avoid taking acetaminophen, also known as Tylenol and paracetamol, and suggesting that those who could not “tough it out” should limit their intake.
Scientists and global health agencies including the World Health Organization have strongly dismissed Trump’s false claims, calling them misguided and saying the evidence linking paracetamol use in pregnancy and autism was “inconsistent”.
The UK’s health secretary, Wes Streeting, told the British public they should not “pay any attention whatsoever to what Donald Trump says about medicine”, adding: “I trust doctors over President Trump frankly, on this.”
But in a wide-ranging interview with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Farage was asked directly if Trump was right to share those unproven claims. He said: “I have no idea, I’ve no idea. You know we were told thalidomide was a very safe drug and it wasn’t. Who knows Nick, I don’t know.
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“He [Trump] has a particular thing about autism. I think because there’s been some in his family, he feels it very personally. I’ve no idea.”
When Farage was asked if he would side with medical experts who say it is dangerous to make the link, he added: “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. When it comes to science, I don’t side with anybody, right? You know? I don’t side with anybody, because science is never settled. We should remember that.”
Yet when challenged over whether it was irresponsible for Trump to make such an unproven claim, Farage said: “That’s an opinion he’s [Trump’s] got. It’s not one that I necessarily share.”
Farage’s refusal to condemn Trump’s claims comes weeks after a controversial doctor, Aseem Malhotra, was given top billing at Reform UK’s party conference and used his main-stage speech to claim the Covid vaccine caused cancer in the royal family. Malhotra is an adviser to Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy.
In the same interview, Farage said Trump was “right to say” that sharia law “is an issue in London”.
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“Never take what he [Trump] says literally, ever on anything. But always take everything he says seriously,” Farage said, adding: Trump “has a point.”
“So is he right to say that sharia is an issue in London? Yes. Is it an overwhelming issue at this stage? No. Has the mayor of London directly linked himself to it? No.”
Labour MPs have urged Keir Starmer to reprimand Trump’s administration after the US president falsely claimed in a speech to the United Nations: “I look at London, where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it’s been changed, it’s been so changed.
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“Now they want to go to sharia law. But you are in a different country, you can’t do that.”
Trump has been publicly attacking the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, since 2015 when the Labour politician criticised Trump, the then presidential candidate, for suggesting that Muslims should be banned from travelling to the US.
A spokesperson for Khan said: “We are not going to dignify his appalling and bigoted comments with a response. London is the greatest city in the world, safer than major US cities and we’re delighted to welcome the record number of US citizens moving here.”
During the LBC phone-in, Farage also said Reform’s plan to ban anyone who was not a UK citizen from claiming benefits would not apply to Ukrainians and Hongkongers.
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“No, because they come for different reasons,” Farage said, adding those who had lived in the UK on indefinite leave to remain and had not worked or paid into the system would be told their benefits would be cut.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Alphabet’s market capitalisation surged above $3tn for the first time on Monday on the back of a sharp rally for the search giant’s shares over the past few weeks.
Shares in Google’s parent company have climbed more than 30 per cent to a record high of $252 since the group posted double-digit growth in revenue and profit in quarterly results out in late July.
The rally means Alphabet joins Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple as the only US companies valued above $3tn. Chipmaker Nvidia in July became the first company to hit a $4tn market value.
