Pope Leo XIV set the tone for his papacy with a call to stop exploiting nature and marginalising the poor at his inaugural mass Sunday attended by dignitaries including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and US Vice President JD Vance.Ten days after he became the first US head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, some 200,000 people gathered to see his inaugural mass in St Peter’s Square, according to the Vatican.Before it started, the Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost delighted the crowds by taking to the popemobile for the first time, smiling, waving and blessing those he passed.In his homily, the soft-spoken 69-year-old returned to the themes of peace, reconciliation and social justice that have marked his first few days as pope.”In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest,” he said. In a prayer afterwards, he noted the ongoing efforts to end the war in Ukraine, before holding a private audience with Zelensky and his wife.”The martyred Ukraine is waiting for negotiations for a just and lasting peace to finally happen,” Leo said.After two decades spent as missionary in Peru, the new pope — who was only made a cardinal in 2023 — is unknown to many Catholics.But many of those gathered in St Peter’s Square said they liked what they had heard so far.Maria Grazia La Barbera, 56, a pilgrim from Palermo in Sicily, said Leo was “the right person at the right time” to lead the Church.”He will certainly do what he promised: knocking down walls and building bridges,” she said.- Vance ‘very proud’ -Leo’s elevation has sparked huge enthusiasm in the United States, which was represented on Sunday by Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019.Vance met with the late Pope Francis the day before he died last month, and queued up to shake Leo’s hand on Sunday along with the other dignitaries.Before becoming pope, Leo reposted on his personal X account criticism of US President Donald Trump’s administration over its approach to migration and also pilloried Vance.But Vance insisted Sunday that the United States was “very proud of him”.”Certainly our prayers go with him as he starts this very important work,” Vance said at a meeting with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.There is some consternation outside the United States that a country with an already outsized political and military role in the world now boasts one its foremost spiritual leaders.”There is going to be extra weight because he is American,” said Sophia Tripp, a 20-year-old student visiting from Leo’s hometown of Chicago.”I think there’s going to be a lot of extra eyes, and maybe criticisms.”She hoped he would “bring people together”, she said. “We are all human, and we should just all be loving to one another.”- ‘Fear and trembling’ -Security was tight for the event, which included politicians from Germany to Peru — where the pope holds citizenship — the Gulf and Canada, as well as faith leaders and European royals.Also lining up to greet the new pontiff inside St Peter’s Basilica after the mass was Leo’s older brother Louis, and the two men shared a hug.Succeeding the charismatic but impulsive Francis, Leo took over a Church still battling the fallout of the clerical child abuse scandal, and trying to adapt to the modern world.He acknowledged on Sunday some trepidation in his new role.”I was chosen, without any merit of my own, and now, with fear and trembling, I come to you as a brother who desires to be the servant of your faith and your joy,” he said.In his homily he warned against “closing ourselves off in our small groups”.”We are called to offer God’s love to everyone, in order to achieve that unity which does not cancel out differences but values the personal history of each person and the social and religious culture of every people,” he said.At the mass, Leo received the pontifical emblems — the pallium, a strip of cloth worn around the neck, and the fisherman’s ring, which is forged anew for each pope.He will wear the ring on his finger until he dies, when it will be destroyed.

Joe Biden lost his eldest son Beau to brain cancer in 2015 — a loss so great that he has repeatedly talked about it over the years.Now, the 82-year-old former president — who has faced renewed scrutiny over his mental acuity while in office, before ceding the White House to arch-nemesis Donald Trump — is facing his own cancer battle.His office announced Sunday that he was diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer, with “metastasis to the bone,” adding that he was reviewing his treatment options.Biden wanted to go down in history as the man who saved America from Donald Trump, by winning the 2020 presidential election and ousting the Republican. He steered a divided country out of the Covid-19 pandemic and the chaos of Trump’s first four years, before pushing through an impressive raft of legislation.But Biden’s single term will now be bookended by his rival’s presidencies. For many, the defining image of the 46th US president will be a haunted-looking Biden lost for words in the disastrous debate against Trump that eventually forced him out of the race in 2024.His replacement as Democratic candidate, his vice president Kamala Harris, was left with an almost impossible task to prevent Trump’s return — and indeed it proved insurmountable.Biden has often insisted that he could have beaten his Republican nemesis.But questions about Biden’s physical and cognitive abilities — and the responses of staff and key Democrats to evident signs of decline — have flared with Tuesday’s pending release of “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by CNN journalist Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios.And a newly released audio recording of Biden speaking haltingly in October 2023, and struggling to remember facts and dates, have added to the debate.- Historic challenges -Biden’s inauguration in January 2021 was a remarkable comeback for an often underestimated politician who spent a lifetime battling both political odds and personal tragedy.But he was an unlikely savior.Biden — born on November 20, 1942 in Pennsylvania — was America’s oldest elected president when he took office, until Trump’s election in 2024.He is arguably more famous for his gaffes, for his decades in the US Senate and for being Barack Obama’s vice president.Though his single term will be remembered for his appointment of the nation’s first Black, South Asian and female vice president, and his commitment to the Western alliances that Trump had trashed, there were irreparable problems.- ‘Get back up’ -Biden’s popularity suffered an early blow with the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 — and never really recovered. His approval rating was just 36 percent in a final CNN poll.His pandemic stimulus sent inflation soaring, part of the reason Americans punished Harris at the polls. And Biden’s lax border policies led to record crossings of illegal immigrants, which Trump pounced on.Fond of folksy tales about his upbringing as a child with a stutter from a blue-collar, Irish Catholic background in Pennsylvania, he would often quote his father’s mantra: “When you get knocked down, you get back up.” He had battled through the tragedy of a car crash that killed his wife and baby daughter in 1972, just days after he’d been elected a US senator at the age of 29 — then rebuilt his life with the help of his second wife, Jill.Biden underwent surgery twice in 1988 for brain aneurysms.Then there was Beau’s death in 2015, and the drug and legal problems of his younger son Hunter, to whom he controversially issued a pardon as he left office.In 2023, Biden had a skin lesion — a basal cell carcinoma — removed from his chest. He had previously had other non-melanoma skin cancers removed.- ‘Oligarchy taking shape’ -But age was a battle he couldn’t win. Trump dubbed Biden “Sleepy Joe” and every stumble — on the stairs of Air Force One, off his bike — was relentlessly replayed on social media. The White House insisted there was no problem and increasingly shielded Biden from unscripted public appearances — until it was too late.He had a parting shot for Trump, warning in his farewell speech of a dangerous “oligarchy taking shape in America.”d/sst/st/bbk