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The newly named pro-migrant archbishop of New York called himself an “unworthy servant” during his first Mass in the city after Pope Leo XIV named his fellow Chicago native to replace a conservative cardinal Thursday.In a significant shift for the US Catholic Church, Leo replaced Timothy Dolan, who stepped down after reaching the church’s retirement age of 75, with Ronald Hicks, a 58-year-old bishop from Illinois.”I’ve always loved the energy of New York,” Hicks said at a Mass for the staff of the New York archdiocese in Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which he also addressed in Spanish. He will be formally installed February 6.The New York archdiocese is among the largest in the United States and the pick ends months of speculation about who would follow Dolan, widely regarded as being close to President Donald Trump.Hicks’s appointment is the most consequential Leo has made since his election to head up the world’s Catholics in May and signals a desire to push back firmly on the US administration’s policies.Hicks shares several similarities with Leo including outspoken solidarity with migrants at a time when Trump is ordering mass deportations and portraying migrants and refugees as criminals.”Thanks to all of you…and thanks to God,” Hicks said in Spanish.More than 36 percent of New Yorkers are foreign-born and 1.8 million speak Spanish at home, per official data.In November, the pope endorsed a rare statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops which heavily criticized the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policies toward undocumented migrants.Hicks said the statement “affirms our solidarity with all our brothers and sisters as it expresses our concerns, opposition, and hopes with clarity and conviction.”It is grounded in the Church’s enduring commitment to the Catholic social teaching of human dignity and a call for meaningful immigration reform,” he said.Dolan walked Hicks around the imposing cathedral with one hand on his shoulder, the other on his ceremonial crozier staff, telling congregants “we got a good one.””He will do a very good job, and because he is young, he will stay a long time,” Margie Javier, an 82-year-old volunteer in the New York archdiocese, told AFP. Hicks earlier quipped at a media briefing that he has the necessary diplomatic skills to manage the culinary and sporting rivalry between his native Chicago and New York City.”Potentially my first controversial statement: I’m a Cubs fan and I love deep-dish pizza,” he said. “However, I am going to start rooting for the New York sports teams, and I already love your pizza.”Hicks said his childhood home was just 14 blocks from Pope Leo’s.”In my 31 years of priesthood, I was formed in Chicago,” he said.- ‘Great affinity’ -Hicks spent five years of ministry in El Salvador in Central America, heading a church-run orphanage program that operated across nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. Leo spent two decades in service in Peru.The outgoing bishop of Joliet, Illinois, also served in several parishes in the archdiocese of Chicago, the city where Leo was born — though the pair only met for the first time in 2024.Dolan, a ruddy-faced extrovert with Irish-American roots, has served in New York since 2009.A theological conservative fiercely opposed to abortion, Dolan sparked controversy in September by comparing slain conservative political activist and Trump supporter Charlie Kirk to a “modern-day Saint Paul.”At Thursday’s Mass, an annual event for the staff of the archdiocese, Dolan heaped praise on his successor.- Abuse challenge -Dolan oversaw the fallout from a major sexual abuse scandal in the diocese.Just weeks ago, the archdiocese announced the creation of a $300 million fund to compensate victims of sexual abuse who had filed complaints against the Church.At the time, Dolan said that a “series of very difficult financial decisions” were made, including layoffs and a 10-percent reduction of its operating budget.Hicks is no stranger to managing the fallout of the abuse scandal. The Joliet diocese he now leaves was criticized under his predecessors for its handling of pedophile priests.The scandal was “something that is never going to be behind us,” Hicks told Vatican News.

The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on two more judges of the International Criminal Court after they rejected an attempt by Israel to end a war crimes probe in Gaza.Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had already ordered sanctions on judges and prosecutors in the case, explicitly linked the new measures to a vote Monday in which the two judges sided with the majority and upheld arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.”We will not tolerate ICC abuses of power that violate the sovereignty of the United States and Israel and wrongly subject US and Israeli persons to the ICC’s jurisdiction,” Rubio said in a statement.”We will continue to respond with significant and tangible consequences to the ICC’s lawfare and overreach,” he wrote.It brings the number of ICC judges sanctioned by the Trump administration to at least eight, along with at least three prosecutors including chief prosecutor Karim Khan.The Hague-based ICC responded that it “strongly rejects” the fresh sanctions.The measures are “a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution,” the ICC said in a statement.Israel praised the US move. “Thank you, Secretary Rubio, for this moral clear stance,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote on X.The judges newly slapped with sanctions were Gocha Lordkipanidze, formerly Georgia’s justice minister, and Erdenebalsuren Damdin of Mongolia.The sanctions ban the judges from entering the United States and block property or financial transactions with them in the world’s largest economy.Lordkipanidze was formerly an adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York.Monday’s 44-page ruling upheld the decision to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza.Netanyahu and Gallant both face accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the relentless Israeli offensive in the Palestinian territory launched after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.The latest action puts the United States in league with Russia, which last week sentenced ICC judges and prosecutor Khan in absentia.The ICC had also issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladmir Putin related to the invasion of Ukraine.The United States, Israel and Russia are among the countries that reject the ICC, which is backed by nearly all Western democracies.The ICC was set up in 2002 as a court of last resort when countries do not have adequate legal systems to ensure accountability.During Trump’s first term, the United States also took action against the top ICC prosecutor in a successful attempt to block an investigation into alleged abuses during the US-led war in Afghanistan.Former president Joe Biden’s administration lifted the sanctions and sought limited cooperation with the court, especially over Ukraine. 

The United States will host talks in Miami on Friday to push the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire, as President Donald Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely visit him at the close of the year.Trump’s roving special envoy Steve Witkoff is to meet senior officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey in Florida, a White House official told AFP Thursday, amid fears that efforts to reach the second stage of the deal are stalling.Under the second stage, Israel is supposed to withdraw from its positions in Gaza, an interim authority is to govern the Palestinian territory instead of Hamas, and an international stabilization force is to be deployed.But progress in moving to that phase of October’s agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was brokered by Washington and its regional allies, has so far been slow.The ceasefire also remains fragile with both sides alleging violations, and mediators fearing that Israel and Hamas alike are stalling.Israel said it had struck and killed the head of weapons production in Hamas’s military wing in the Gaza Strip last weekend, a move that reportedly sparked Trump to warn of jeopardizing the truce.Trump said Netanyahu would “probably come to see me in Florida,” where the US president will be staying over the Christmas holidays at his Mar-a-Lago resort.”He would like to see me. We haven’t set it up formally, but he’d like to see me,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about a report by the Axios news site that Netanyahu was expected to visit on December 29.- ‘Justice is served’ -Trump said in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday that the Gaza truce had brought peace to the Middle East “for the first time in 3,000 years.”In the first phase of the Gaza deal, Palestinian militants committed to releasing the remaining 48 living and dead captives held in the territory. So far, they have released all of the hostages except for one body.But the Trump administration is now keen to proceed to the difficult second stage, with the provision for Hamas to lay down its weapons being a particular sticking point.Hamas’s Gaza chief Khalil al-Hayya said Sunday that the militant group had a “legitimate right” to hold weapons. Israel has repeatedly insisted Hamas “will be disarmed.”The third phase includes the reconstruction of the vast areas of Gaza levelled by Israel’s retaliatory military campaign for Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel.Turkey said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan would represent Ankara at the talks with Witkoff. “Turkey will continue to fight determinedly on every front to ensure that what is happening in Gaza is not forgotten, that justice is served,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a speech on Wednesday.Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner played a key role in the shuttle diplomacy that led to the deal to end the Gaza war.The US pair are also involved in talks to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and will meet Russian officials in Miami over the weekend.

The $1,776 payments to US troops announced by President Donald Trump will come from funds already allocated by Congress to supplement military housing allowances, officials said on Thursday.Trump announced the so-called “warrior dividend” in an address to the nation on Wednesday. He said it would be paid for with revenue from the sweeping tariffs he has imposed and presented it as a new initiative.Lawmakers from the opposition Democratic Party sharply criticized the president over the announcement, while a top Republican senator confirmed that the funding Trump is employing was aimed at offsetting housing costs for troops.The “$1,776 ‘warrior checks’ aren’t Christmas bonuses — you’re just stealing money out of a fund meant to help our troops find affordable housing,” Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), wrote on X.Democratic Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, also took aim at Trump, saying he “isn’t giving our brave service members a bonus, he’s just shuffling around money so he can claim he is.”Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said the planned payments are the result of Trump’s “unwavering commitment to our warriors and the provisions provided in the One Big Beautiful Bill” — a reference to a major legislative package that Trump signed into law in July.Senator Roger Wicker, the Republican chairman of SASC, praised the announcement by Trump, saying it would implement additional funding provided by Congress in that law “to help offset housing costs for service members.”The law provided for $2.9 billion in funding “to supplement the basic allowance for housing” for members of the military.

The US health department on Thursday announced proposed measures that would effectively ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth, a major escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back protections for trans people.The series of sweeping proposals announced by US health chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials would cut off vital federal funding from hospitals that provide pediatric gender transition services — including puberty blockers, hormone therapies and surgical interventions — even in states where they are legal.In announcing his proposals — which are not final and must go through lengthy review and public comment — Kennedy called gender-affirming care “malpractice” based on “junk science driven by ideological pursuits.” His health department this year released a report largely written by critics of gender transition that emphasized risks of gender-affirming care and urged counseling before interventions — a document that proved central to Thursday’s announcement.The proposed measures would prohibit reimbursements for minors’ gender-affirming care from Medicaid, the federal program that provides health care coverage to low-income children and adults.Even more limiting, it would revoke all funding from both Medicaid and Medicare — the health care program for elderly adults and disabled people — from any hospital that provides such care.Such a move would place extreme financial hardship on facilities if they continued to provide such health services.It puts medical providers in an “extremely precarious position,” said Michael Ulrich, a Boston University professor of public health and law.”I’m not sure there’s a provider that exists that doesn’t rely substantially on federal money,” he told AFP.- ‘Life-saving’ care -The American Civil Liberties Union vowed a legal battle, calling the proposals “cruel” as well as “unconstitutional, saying they target “a vulnerable population for political gain.”The American Academy of Pediatrics — which just abruptly lost federal funds in the millions including for initiatives to prevent infant death, according to a Washington Post report — called Thursday’s actions and rhetoric “harmful.””These rules help no one, do nothing to address health care costs, and unfairly stigmatize a population of young people,” the organization’s president said in a statement.The LGBTQ advocacy organization Human Rights Campaign said the proposals would “force providers into an impossible choice: stop providing health care to trans youth in order to protect federal funding for every other patient.”Zoe Taylor, a family doctor in the western US state of Washington, called gender-affirming health care “life-saving.”The physician, a fellow with the advocacy organization Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in her practice she’s seen “youth thrive once their gender dysphoria is treated.””Treating trans kids with gender-affirming care prevents and treats other mental health issues that come from society’s reaction to trans youth, and also to their own gender dysphoria,” she told AFP.The proposals are an intrusion on the relationship between patients, their families and physicians, she said.- ‘Extremely dangerous’ -Throughout the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonized any recognition of gender diversity and placed strong focus on attacking transgender people.But the push to withhold broader federal health funding from any provider who offers transgender care scaled up Trump’s crusade dramatically.And it came one day after a split House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill that would criminalize providing gender-affirming medical care to trans minors.Transgender people are a small proportion of the population, but lawyer Ulrich said the issue is both “extremely bad for transgender youth” and could “open the door” for other controversial government health care decisions.”I don’t think that enough people recognize the extent to which this is the federal government saying, ‘We have the authority to declare to hospitals throughout the country what kind of health care they can and cannot provide,'” he said. “It’s an extremely, extremely dangerous proposition for the future.”

The White House announced Thursday that Washington’s iconic John F. Kennedy arts center is to be renamed the “Trump-Kennedy Center” after President Donald Trump.The extraordinary naming of a major cultural venue after a living president is just the latest effort by the 79-year-old Republican to stamp his identity on the US capital in his second term.He has also demolished the White House East Wing in order to install a grand ballroom, and is seeking to construct a large triumphal arch.White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Kennedy Center’s board — which Trump purged of Democrats earlier this year before installing himself as chairman — had “voted unanimously” for the change.She said it was “because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building. Not only from the standpoint of its reconstruction, but also financially, and its reputation.””Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur,” she added.The towering white monument is named after president John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. The center, which sits on the banks of the Potomac River, opened in 1971.Trump has made a number of references to renaming the center in recent months.Earlier this month at the opening of a peace institute that had also been renamed after him, Trump referred to it as the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” before adding: “Whoops, excuse me.”During his first term, billionaire Trump never attended the annual fundraising gala for recipients of the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors, as many of those artists vocally opposed his policies.This time, Trump moved quickly to make the center his own, ridding the board of trustees of its Democratic appointees and ousting its president, as part of a wider assault on federally funded cultural institutions he deemed too “woke.”Trump then presented the honors this year himself, giving awards to “Rocky” actor Sylvester Stallone, disco legend Gloria Gaynor and rock band KISS.A few days earlier, at the draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup on December 5, Trump received a new peace prize from football’s governing body and made a speech on stage.

US House Democrats on Thursday published a fresh batch of photographs from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, stepping up pressure on Donald Trump’s administration on the eve of its deadline to release federal files on the late financier and convicted sex offender.The 68 images — shared without added context — are part of a much larger cache that Congress obtained from Epstein’s estate and has been drip-feeding to the public in recent days, stoking political drama in Washington.Among the newly released photos are shots of passports and identity documents from multiple countries, most of the personal details redacted. Several documents are marked “female,” including passports from places such as Ukraine and Russia, and a number of faces in the images are obscured to protect identities.Other photographs include two images showing public intellectual Noam Chomsky seated with Epstein on what appears to be an aircraft, and pictures of Bill Gates posing beside a woman whose face is blurred. The cache also includes images of filmmaker Woody Allen and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon — both of whom featured in an earlier photo release.The latest batch of photographs do not appear to depict any unlawful conduct by any of the subjects.But one screenshot shows a snippet of a text exchange in which an unknown sender appears to discuss recruiting young women.”I have a friend scout she sent me some girls today. But she asks 1000$ per girl. I will send u girls now. Maybe someone will be good for J?” the post says.The screenshot includes a partially redacted physical description and the line “18 y old,” but provides no names or clear indication of who is speaking.A separate image shows a woman’s foot bearing a handwritten quote from Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita,” a novel about a man’s sexual obsession with a child — another detail released without explanation.Democrats say they are publishing material as it arrives while redacting identifying information for victims and anyone who could be a victim. Republicans, who control the Oversight Committee that is tasked with ensuring government transparency and accountability, have accused Democrats of “cherry-picking” to shape a narrative.The Justice Department (DOJ) has remained silent on whether it will meet Friday’s deadline, set by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed last month with bipartisan support. The law requires the DOJ to publish the most comprehensive set of Epstein-related materials yet, while safeguarding victims’ identities.Epstein, a convicted sex offender with ties to global elites, died in his New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death — ruled a suicide — fueled conspiracy theories and demands for accountability.”Oversight Democrats will continue to release photographs and documents from the Epstein estate to provide transparency for the American people,” the committee’s top Democrat, Robert Garcia, said, calling for the Justice Department to “release the Epstein files now.”

The leaders of Brazil and Mexico on Thursday offered to step in to try and avert the risk of war between the United States and Venezuela.The Latin American heavyweights are looking on in dismay as Washington ramps up military and economic pressure on Nicholas Maduro’s government, raising fears of a direct effort to unseat the Venezuelan leader.The United Nations Security Council will meet next Tuesday at the request of Caracas — backed by China and Russia — which urged an urgent meeting over the “ongoing US aggression”.President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said he was “very worried” about the mounting crisis on Brazil’s doorstep.The 80-year-old leftist said he had told US President Donald Trump that “things wouldn’t be resolved by shooting, that it was better to sit down around a table to find a solution.”He said he had offered Brazil’s help to both leaders to “avoid an armed conflict here in Latin America.”Lula spoke to Trump by phone earlier in December and the Brazilian leader said he may reach out to Trump again before Christmas to reinforce this offer, “so that we can have a diplomatic agreement and not a fratricidal war.” “I am at the disposal of both Venezuela and the US to contribute to a peaceful solution on our continent.”Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also offered to act as a go-between in talks between Washington and Caracas to find “a peaceful solution so that there is no US intervention.”Russia meanwhile said it was in constant contact with close ally Maduro and called for a “de-escalation”.Moscow’s foreign ministry said it hoped the White House will “not allow a fatal mistake and will refrain from further sliding into a situation that threatens unpredictable consequences for the entire Western hemisphere.”- Regime change? -Trump’s administration accuses Maduro of leading a drug trafficking cartel and has built up a major naval presence in the Caribbean Sea, despite Venezuela being a minnow in the global drug trade.US strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific have left at least 99 people dead, with the latest strike Wednesday claiming four more lives.Trump this week declared a blockade of “sanctioned oil vessels” to and from Caracas.Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves although years of mismanagement and corruption have slashed production and hamstrung the economy in recent years.Trump told Politico last week that Maduro’s “days are numbered” and declined to rule out US ground attacks on Venezuela.Maduro says the United States is bent on regime change and wants to seize Venezuela’s oil reserves.The leftist this year began a third six-year term after a presidential election win last year that much of the international community did not recognize. Lula — who did not endorse Maduro’s victory — said he was concerned about what was behind the US campaign.”It can’t just be about overthrowing Maduro. What are the other interests that we don’t yet know about?” he said, adding he did not know if it was about Venezuela’s oil, or critical minerals, or rare earths.”Nobody ever says concretely why this war is necessary.”

Pope Leo XIV has accepted the resignation of New York’s conservative Archbishop Timothy Dolan and named a little-known, pro-migrant bishop from his native Chicago to replace him, the Vatican said Thursday.In a significant shift for the Catholic Church in the United States, Leo replaced Dolan, who stepped down after reaching the Church’s retirement age of 75, with Ronald Hicks, a 58-year-old bishop from Illinois.The New York archdiocese is among the largest in the US and the pick ends months of speculation about who would follow Dolan, widely regarded as being close to US President Donald Trump.This is the most important bishop appointment Leo has made since his election to head up the world’s Catholics in May and signals a desire to push back firmly on the US administration’s policies.Hicks shares several similarities with Leo including outspoken solidarity with migrants at a time when Trump is ordering mass deportations and portraying migrants and refugees as criminals.In November, the pope endorsed a rare statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops which heavily criticised the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policies toward undocumented migrants.He said the statement “affirms our solidarity with all our brothers and sisters as it expresses our concerns, opposition, and hopes with clarity and conviction.”It is grounded in the Church’s enduring commitment to the Catholic social teaching of human dignity and a call for meaningful immigration reform,” he said.In an event at Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dolan said “I already love (Hicks) and appreciate him and trust him.””Is there sadness in my heart? Sure, because I love the Archdiocese in New York, that sadness is mitigated by the gift” of Hicks’s arrival.Hicks quipped that he has the necessary diplomatic skills to manage the culinary and sporting rivalry between his native Chicago and New York.”Potentially my first controversial statement I’m a Cubs fan, and I love deep-dish pizza,” he said.”That said, I want you to know that I’m going to remain a loyal Cubs fan. However, I am going to start rooting for the New York sports teams, and I already love your pizza,” he said.He noted that his childhood home was just 14 blocks from Leo’s, he said.”In my 31 years of priesthood, I was formed in Chicago,” he said.- ‘Great affinity’ -Hicks spent five years of ministry in El Salvador in Central America, heading a church-run orphanage programme that operated across nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. Leo spent two decades in service in Peru.The outgoing bishop of Joliet, Illinois, also served in several parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago, the city where Leo was born — though the pair only met for the first time in 2024.Dolan, a ruddy-faced extrovert with Irish-American roots, has served in New York since 2009.A theological conservative fiercely opposed to abortion, Dolan sparked controversy in September by comparing the conservative political activist and Trump supporter Charlie Kirk to a “modern-day Saint Paul”.- Abuse challenge -Dolan oversaw the fallout from a major sexual abuse scandal in the diocese.Just a couple of weeks ago, the archdiocese announced the creation of a $300 million fund to compensate victims of sexual abuse who had filed complaints against the Church.At the time, Dolan said that a “series of very difficult financial decisions” were made, including layoffs within the archdiocese and a 10-percent reduction of its operating budget.Hicks is no stranger to managing the fallout of the abuse scandal. The Joliet diocese he now leaves was criticised under his predecessors for its handling of pedophile priests.The scandal was “something that is never going to be behind us”, Hicks told Vatican News.

US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will hold talks with senior officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey in Miami on Friday on the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, a White House official told AFP.Under the second stage, Israel is supposed to withdraw from its positions in Gaza, an interim authority is to govern the Palestinian territory instead of Hamas, and an international stabilization force is to be deployed.But progress has so far been slow in moving to the following phase of October’s agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was brokered by Washington and its regional allies.Turkey said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan would attend the talks. Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty would also be there, the Axios news outlet reported.”Turkey will continue to fight determinedly on every front to ensure that what is happening in Gaza is not forgotten, that justice is served,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a speech on Wednesday.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on December 29, Axios said, as the US president pushes for a longer-term deal.Trump said in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday that the Gaza truce had brought peace to the Middle East “for the first time in 3,000 years.”But the ceasefire remains fragile with both sides alleging violations, and mediators fearing that Israel and Hamas alike are playing for time.Israel said it had struck and killed the head of weapons production in Hamas’s military wing in the Gaza Strip last weekend, a move that reportedly sparked Trump to warn of jeopardizing the truce.Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner played a key role in the shuttle diplomacy that led to the deal to end the Gaza war, which was sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel.The US pair are also involved in talks to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and will meet Russian officials in Miami over the weekend.