ROME: Pope Leo XIV strongly affirmed the rights of the weakest against the ambitions of the powerful during an audience Saturday with refugees from Chagos, a contested Indian Ocean archipelago that is home to a strategic US-UK military base.
History’s first American pope insisted on the right of the Chagossian people to return to their homes and hailed a recent UK-Mauritius treaty over the archipelago’s future as symbolically important on the international stage.
Leo met with a delegation of refugees from Chagos, some 2,000 of whom who were evicted from their homes by Britain in the 1960s and 1970s so the US could build a naval and bomber base on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia.
Displaced islanders fought for years in UK courts for the right to go home. In May, Britain and Mauritius signed a treaty to hand sovereignty over the islands to Mauritius while still ensuring the future of the base.
Leo told the refugees he was “delighted” that the treaty had been reached, saying it represented a “significant victory” in their long battle to “repair a grave injustice. He praised in particular the role of the Chagossian women in peacefully asserting their rights to go home.
“The renewed prospect of your return to your native archipelago is an encouraging sign and a powerful symbol on the international stage: all peoples, even the smallest and weakest, must be respected by the powerful in their identity and rights, in particular the right to live on their land; and no one can force them into exile,” Leo said in French.
He said he hoped that Mauritian authorities will commit to ensuring their return, and pledged the help of the local Catholic Church.
Under the agreement, the UK will pay Mauritius an average of 101 million pounds ($136 million) a year to lease back the base for at least 99 years. It establishes a trust fund to benefit the Chagossians and says “Mauritius is free to implement a program of resettlement” on the islands other than Diego Garcia. But it does not require the residents to be resettled, and some displaced islanders fear it will be even harder to return to their place of birth after Mauritius takes control.
Mauritius had long contested Britain’s claim to the archipelago, and the United Nations and its top court had urged Britain to return the Chagos to Mauritius, around 2,100 kilometers (1,250 miles) southwest of the islands.
In a non-binding 2019 opinion, the International Court of Justice ruled that the UK had unlawfully carved up Mauritius when it agreed to end colonial rule in the late 1960s.
Pope Francis visited Mauritius in 2019 and met with a group of Chagossians in the Vatican in 2023. Francis told reporters en route home from Mauritius in 2019 that Britain should obey the UN and return the islands to Mauritius.
Pope meets with Chagos refugees and delivers message about rights of the weak against the powerful
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Pope meets with Chagos refugees and delivers message about rights of the weak against the powerful
- Pope Leo XIV has strongly affirmed the rights of the weakest against the ambitions of the powerful
- He delivered the message during an audience Saturday with refugees from Chagos
Huge cache of Epstein documents includes emails financier exchanged with wealthy and powerful
- The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act
- “Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people,” Blanche said
WASHINGTON: A huge new tranche of files on millionaire financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein released Friday revealed details of his communications with the wealthy and powerful, some not long before he died by suicide in 2019.
The Justice Department said it was disclosing more than 3 million pages of documents, as well as thousands of videos and photos, as required by a law passed by Congress. By Friday evening, more than 600,000 documents had been published online. Millions of files that prosecutors had identified as potentially subject to release under the law remain under wraps, however, drawing criticism from Democrats.
Here's what we know so far about the files now being reviewed by a team of Associated Press reporters:
Epstein talked politics with Steve Bannon and an ex-Obama official
The documents show Epstein exchanged hundreds of friendly texts with Steve Bannon, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, some months before Epstein's death.
They discussed politics, travel and a documentary Bannon was said to be planning that would help salvage Epstein's reputation.
In March 2019, Bannon asked Epstein if he could supply his plane to pick him up in Rome.
A couple of months later, Epstein messaged to Bannon, “Now you can understand why trump wakes up in the middle of the night sweating when he hears you and I are friends.”
The context is unclear from the documents, which were released with many redactions and little clear organization.
Another 2018 exchange focused on Trump’s threats at the time to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom he had named to the post just the year prior.
Around the same time, Epstein also communicated with Kathy Ruemmler, a lawyer and former Obama White House official. In a typo-filled email, he warned that Democrats should stop demonizing Trump as a Mafia-type figure even as he derided the president as a “maniac.”
Bannon did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comment. Ruemmler said through a spokesperson she was associated with Epstein professionally during her time as a lawyer in private practice and now “regrets ever knowing him.”
He also chatted with Elon Musk and Howard Lutnick about island visits
Billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk e-mailed Epstein in 2012 and 2013 about visiting his infamous island compound, the scene of many allegations of sexual abuse.
Epstein inquired in an email about how many people Musk would like flown by helicopter, and Musk responded that it would likely be just him and his partner at the time. “What day/night will be the wildest party on =our island?” he wrote, according to the Justice Department records.
It’s not immediately clear if the island visits took place. Spokespersons for Musk’s companies, Tesla and X, didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment Friday.
Musk has maintained that he repeatedly turned down the disgraced financier’s overtures. “Epstein tried to get me to go to his island and I REFUSED,” he posted on X in 2025
Epstein also invited Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to the island in Dec. 2012. Lutnick's wife enthusiastically accepted the invitation and said they would arrive on a yacht with their children. The two also had drinks on another occasion in 2011, according to a schedule. Six years later, they e-mailed about the construction of a building across the street from both of their homes.
Lutnick has distanced himself from Epstein, calling him “gross” and saying in 2025 that he cut ties decades ago. He didn’t respond to an e-mailed request for comment on Friday afternoon.
The records also have new details on Epstein's incarceration and suicide
Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019, and found dead in his cell just over a month later.
The latest batch of documents includes emails between investigators about Epstein’s death, including an investigator's observation that his final communication doesn't look like a suicide note. Multiple investigations have determined that Epstein's death was a suicide.
The records also detail a trick that jail staffers used to fool the media gathered outside while Epstein’s body was removed: they used boxes and sheets to create what appeared to be a body and loaded it into a white van labeled as belonging to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
The reporters followed the van when it left the jail, not knowing that Epstein’s actual body was loaded into a black vehicle, which departed “unnoticed,” according to the interview notes.
