THE CONCLAVE TO COME — There was a feeling among some Catholics that Pope Francis would, somehow, live forever.

The ailing Pontiff had stared down death plenty of times. He had survived a serious respiratory infection as a young man, losing some of his lung in the process. Covid-19, surgeries, sciatica, a hernia, even the most recent hospitalization where his doctors considered ending treatment, none of it had stopped him.

When the late Pope delivered the Angelus prayer and rode through St. Peter’s Square on Easter Sunday, greeting the jubilant crowd of believers gathered there, he looked and sounded weak. Diminished, even. But few could have predicted that appearance would be his last and that just hours later, he would leave unfinished his ambitious project of reimagining the world’s largest Christian church and its place in a modern world.

Catholicism now stands at a crossroads of Francis’ construction. Uncertain is the direction the Catholic Church will take under a new leader, who will be selected in the coming months. And no ideological faction of the church is at ease.

As the late pontiff’s health declined in recent years, the prospect of an imminent conclave had instilled some dread in the hearts of progressives and conservatives alike. Because for all of the discussion of papabile — the feted contenders for the top job in the Catholic Church — conclaves are unpredictable and ultimately Bishops of Rome chart paths that defy the prophecies of even the most seasoned Vatican watchers.

Francis was no exception to that phenomenon. The liberal Argentine Jesuit was named a cardinal by the architect of many of the church’s current structures, the more conservative late Pope Saint John Paul II. Francis also emerged from a College of Cardinals largely picked by John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, also a conservative. Francis, who was a liberal contender in the conclave to replace John Paul II, didn’t even show up on some of the media’s lists of contenders for the 2013 selection.

Francis’ papacy was dominated with discussion of specific ecclesial issues — same-sex marriage, Church management, the lingering stain of the sex abuse scandal, whether to allow masses to be said in Latin, to name a few. Yet what defined and animated Francis’ papacy wasn’t any one hot-button topic. Instead, it was the struggle Francis demanded within the Catholic Church over what face it should adopt in the midst of a confounding modern era defined by increased irreligiosity, isolation and political polarization, global inequality, the buckling of the international order and the resurgence of armed conflict.

Core to that struggle was one question: who should chart the direction of Catholicism? The priests or the laity — the people who sit in the pews, serve Communion, volunteer at the parish and do all the communal functions that keep parishes alive?

In Francis’ view, it was the laity who needed to be empowered as a way to tackle the clericalism which created cultures of abuse in the Catholic Church. Core to that mission was the inauguration of the Synod on Synodality, a universal effort by the Church to listen to lay people and enact liturgical, pastoral and theological changes based on their perspectives.

It was a project I unwittingly found myself to be a part of at Georgetown University, when I was asked to participate in a working group of students from Jesuit colleges and universities around the Americas as part of the Synod. Over Zoom, another Georgetown student and I presented the findings of our group of Jesuit colleges on the East Coast to Pope Francis directly, who took diligent notes on our comments and responded directly to our points.

Francis often found himself bridging the divides in a global church straddling vastly different theological views and perspectives on the modern world. He frustrated European bishops hungry for the Catholic Church to embrace socially liberal causes — chiefly gay marriage — by pursuing incremental changes to church messaging that did not get ahead of more socially conservative church leaders in Africa and Asia. Those same conservatives at times chafed that Francis restricted the use of Latin Mass.

Yet nowhere was Francis’ vision more aggressively and publicly resisted than in the United States. There, a crop of bishops cut from the cloth of John Paul II and Benedict actively resisted Francis’ efforts to devolve the church, emboldened by a fast-growing movement of far-right U.S. Catholic adult converts who embrace tradition and a revanchist embrace of Catholic personal values and teachings in response to the perceived failings of modernity. One former bishop closely aligned with that section of the church, Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, went so far as to call Francis “diabolically oriented” as many in that movement challenged Francis’ legitimacy.

Francis also criticized the Trump administration’s immigration policies, condemning what he described as inhumane treatment of migrants, teeing up tensions with an administration which won a majority of votes from U.S. Catholics in the last election. Recent condemnations from Rome got sharp pushback from Vice President JD Vance, an adult convert to Catholicism who is admired by more traditionalist Catholics in the United States. Vance and Francis met briefly on Easter Sunday, hours before Francis died.

Francis wasn’t shy about punishing his most vitriolic U.S. detractors. Strickland was removed from his ministry. Raymond Cardinal Burke, an American traditionalist known for his excessive vestments and his petty conflicts with Francis, lost his extravagant Vatican apartment. He also excommunicated Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Vatican ambassador to the United States who accused Francis of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse allegations against former Archbishop of Washington Theodore Cardinal McCarrick and rejected the findings of the modernizing Second Vatican Council.

But Francis, in a departure from previous pontiffs, tolerated more dissent as part of his Jesuitical focus on discernment and navigating crises through debate and listening. He embraced crisis, so long as it did not stoke his bigger worry: conflict.

“When the Church is viewed in terms of conflict — right versus left, progressive versus traditionalist — she becomes fragmented and polarized, distorting and betraying her true nature. She is, on the other hand, a body in continual crisis, precisely because she is alive,” Francis said in a December 2020 address to the Roman Curia, which governs the Vatican. “She must never become a body in conflict, with winners and losers, for in this way she would spread apprehension, become more rigid and less synodal, and impose a uniformity far removed from the richness and plurality that the Spirit has bestowed on his Church.”

Whoever prevails in the coming conclave will have to reckon with the crisis of Francis’ making as tensions simmer in the Vatican, with profound implications on the lives of the over one billion Catholics around the world.

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— Trump to attend Pope Francis’s funeral: President Donald Trump said he will attend the funeral of Pope Francis in what would be the president’s first foreign trip in his second administration. “Melania and I will be going to the funeral of Pope Francis, in Rome. We look forward to being there!” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday afternoon, referring to first lady Melania Trump. The Vatican has not announced a date for the funeral.

— Trump offers private reassurance to embattled Hegseth: President Donald Trump has privately told Pete Hegseth that he’s sticking by him, reinforcing his public support for the embattled Defense secretary who has faced calls for his ouster amid growing turmoil at the Pentagon. The two spoke privately after a former Pentagon spokesperson criticized his leadership in a POLITICO op-ed on Sunday, stating that “the building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”

— Supreme Court appears to reject conservative argument over Obamacare provision: A majority of the Supreme Court appeared inclined to reject a conservative challenge to Obamacare today, leaving in place the federal government’s authority to require insurers to cover everything from depression screenings to HIV prevention drugs at no cost to patients. And, in an odd twist, it was the Trump administration defending the health law that the president has spent more than a decade excoriating.

— Ed Department to begin garnishing wages on defaulted student loan borrowers: The Trump administration announced Monday it will start the process of collecting on defaulted federal student loans on May 5. The Treasury Offset Program, which collects debts by intercepting payments such as tax refunds and Social Security benefits, will administer the collections. Following a required 30 day notice to borrowers, wage garnishment will start later this summer, a senior Education Department official said Monday on a call with reporters. No federal student loan has been referred to collections since March 2020 when the Education Department paused federal student loan payments and collections during the Covid-19 pandemic.

— Harvard files suit in challenge to Trump administration’s funding cuts: Harvard University filed suit today against the Trump administration, challenging its decision to cut more than $2 billion in grants in a high-profile showdown between the government and the prestigious educational institution. Harvard President Alan Garber said in a statement announcing the suit that the university chose to challenge what it considered unreasonable demands from an administration antisemitism task force to “to control whom we hire and what we teach.” The administration had no immediate comment on the suit, which was filed in federal court in Massachusetts.

ENFORCEMENT ISSUES — Big Tech companies including X, Meta, Apple and TikTok should be aware Europe is ready to enforce its full digital rulebook no matter who is in charge of these firms or where they’re located, the European Commission president told POLITICO. “The rules voted by our co-legislators must be enforced,” Ursula von der Leyen said in written replies to questions about the EU’s commitment to its digital rules.

“That’s why we’ve opened cases against TikTok, X, Apple, Meta just to name a few. We apply the rules fairly, proportionally, and without bias. We don’t care where a company’s from and who’s running it. We care about protecting people,” she added.

The remarks point to EU resolve to enforce an extensive package of digital rules that have come in for bitter criticism from senior members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. Vice President JD Vance has led the charge against European laws such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), which governs content, or the AI Act, arguing that they censor free speech and stifle innovation in Europe.

Two months before the U.S. presidential election, Vance drew a direct link between Washington’s continued participation in NATO and Europe’s digital rulebook, saying the United States could withdraw from the alliance if the EU enforced rules on platforms.

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING BUNDESWEHR — Germany wants a stronger army. It just doesn’t know who will serve.

Berlin’s incoming government, formed by Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), has released a coalition agreement outlining plans for a new voluntary military service to rebuild the overstretched and steadily shrinking ranks of Germany’s armed forces, the Bundeswehr.

The plan involves sending a mandatory questionnaire to all 18-year-old men — voluntary for women — to assess willingness and fitness to serve. Those selected would be invited to enlist, but only if they choose to.

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, an SPD politician who is expected to stay in his post in the new government, defended the approach as a pragmatic step forward. “With a new military service, we will ensure both growth and staying power in the armed forces,” he said at a Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting in Brussels last week. “We are making the Bundeswehr more attractive. That is both a prerequisite and a result.”

But without clear evidence of how many people would sign up under the plan, a warning light is already flashing inside Germany’s defense circles. “If basic military service doesn’t manage to significantly motivate more young people to volunteer for the armed forces in the near future, the Bundeswehr will fall short of the necessary number of active soldiers and trained reservists,” said Christian Richter, a reserve lieutenant colonel and legal expert at the German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies, the Bundeswehr’s think tank.

$14 million

The amount in quarterly lobbying revenues reported by Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm led by a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump. That figure is more than triple the firm’s quarterly lobbying revenues compared with the same time a year ago, as companies and organizations have sought help from a handful of firms close to the new administration to decipher a second Trump administration marked by upheaval and retribution.

OUT OF SHAPE — Chinese-made humanoid robots have made headlines in recent months, going viral for performing synchronized dances among other impressive feats. But the robot-led apocalypse isn’t here quite yet; they still can’t really seem to run. At a half-marathon in Beijing this weekend, about 12,000 people and 21 robots competed. Only six robots completed the race at all, with only one qualifying in under the slowest time allowed for human runners of 3 hours and 10 minutes. The problems? Overheating, battery issues and an inability to stay on their “feet.” The race proved that despite the hype, humanoid robot technology hasn’t improved very much in this field since around 2021. Robots may someday be able to mimic humans more effectively, but it’s not here yet. Zeyi Yang reports for WIRED.

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