Pope Francis, the ‘World’s Parish Priest’ Who Led in an Era of Crisis, Dies at 88

Pope Francis, the reform-minded Roman Catholic leader who guided the church through an era of crisis, died Monday, April 21, a day after appearing at St. Peter’s Square to offer members of the public an Easter blessing. He was 88 years old.

“Dear brothers and sisters, it is with profound sadness I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Vatican camerlengo, said in announcement.“At 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the home of the Father. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of his Church.”

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Francis’ papacy marked a number of firsts: the first pope from the Americas; the first non-European pope; the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere; the first pope from the developing world; the first Pope to attend a G7 summit; the first Pope to visit Iraq; the first Jesuit pope, and the first pope to take the name Francis after Saint Francis of Assisi, who was famous for his ministry to the poor.

His papacy also reflected a first in terms of his willingness to hear out different points of view on controversial issues including marriage, sexuality, the priesthood, and celibacy in the church that his predecessors weren’t willing to debate. While none of the major church traditions were tossed out during his tenure, and at a time when the child sex abuse scandal that has plagued the church for years created a crisis of conscience particularly among young Catholics, Francis stood out for exuding a certain level of empathy, humility, and mercy that people felt connected to in a way they said they never felt with past popes. He served as the world’s conscience. In 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, he strongly urged President Vladimir Putin to “stop this spiral of violence and death” and avoid the “absurd” risk of nuclear war. During the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, he condemned the air strikes and called for peace, even keeping up his regular chats with a Catholic parish in Gaza while hospitalized for pneumonia. As TIME explained when it chose Pope Francis as its 2013 “Person of the Year,” he “changed the tone and perception and focus of one of the world’s largest institutions in an extraordinary way.”

Early life

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born on December 17, 1936, in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital city, the eldest of accountant Mario Bergoglio and Regina Sivori’s five children. His parents were Italian immigrants who fled Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, and his grandmother Rosa Margherita Vassallo di Bergoglio was active in Catholic Action, formed by Italian bishops who wanted to maintain their independence from Mussolini’s authoritarian rule. His grandmother had the biggest influence on him, according to biographer Austen Ivereigh, who wrote in Wounded Shepherd: Pope Francis and His Struggle to Convert the Catholic Church that “it was an austere but happy lower middle-class family life.” Grandma Bergoglio would take him to Mass, educated him about the saints and the rosary, and introduced him and his siblings to Italian literature and his favorite novel, Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed.

His family retained their love for Italian culture, and Bergoglio grew up listening to opera and watching every Italian movie that came to town. His love for soccer dates back to this period, when he followed the small Buenos Aires soccer team San Lorenzo with his father.

Bergoglio first contemplated the priesthood as a preteen, writing to one girl he admired, Amalia Damonte, “If I don’t become a priest, I’ll marry you.” The epiphany came a few years later, at age 16. At 9 a.m. on Sept. 21, 1953, he was en route to meet classmates from the vocational school where he studied chemistry when he passed San José de Flores Church in Buenos Aires. He went into the confessional booth, and came out of it convinced that he should become a priest. “I felt I had to enter: It was one of those things one feels inside and one doesn’t know why,” he said in a 2012 Buenos Aires radio interview. “I felt like someone grabbed me from inside and took me to the confessional,” he also said. He ended up going home instead of going out with his friends because he felt “overwhelmed.”

Despite that realization, he later admitted he continued to contemplate his future before entering the seminary. “God left the door open for me for a few years,” he says in the 2010 compilation of interviews Pope Francis: Conversations with Jorge Bergoglio by Francesca Ambrogetti and Sergio Rubin. “Religious vocation is a call from God to your heart, whether you are waiting for it consciously or unconsciously.”

On Dec. 13, 1969—four days before his 33rd birthday—he was ordained as a priest with the Society of Jesus, the largest religious order for Catholic men better known as the Jesuits. He continued his studies at University of Alcalá in Spain, and then returned to Argentina to a seminary in the city of San Miguel, where he oversaw the new seminary students and taught theology.

Before the Papacy

As pope, he was noted to have an openness to his decision-making that differed from his papal predecessors. His style can be traced back to moments when he made unpopular decisions in Argentina, which led to a personal evolution.

A few years into the priesthood, in 1973, he became the leader, or Provincial, of the Jesuits in Argentina at just 36 years old. Soon after, he was embroiled in a crisis that could have jeopardized his career amid one of the most tumultuous periods in Argentina’s history.

During the so-called “Dirty War” from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s that took place in Argentina, two Jesuits serving in slums—Father Orlando Yorio and Father Francisco Jalics—were among those seen as rebels. After a military coup on March 24, 1976, overthrew the country’s president and replaced it with a military dictatorship, Yorio and Jalics were kidnapped for five months and subjected to torture. Bergoglio was accused of not doing all he could to protect them, though he testified in a court case that stemmed from the kidnapping that he did meet military officers privately and pressed for their release.

“My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative,” he said as he reflected on that period in an interview with the Jesuit and Catholic magazine America published in September 2013 after becoming pope.

His leadership style was further shaped while serving as rector of the Colegio de San José in Buenos Aires from 1980 to 1986. There, he had his students work on farms—harvesting crops and milking cows to feed the city’s poor—but he grew unpopular among those who emphasized more classroom time. He was eventually forced out of the role, and relocated to Córdoba in 1990, where the 53-year-old spent two years living in a tiny room in a Jesuit residence, essentially in exile. It was “a time of great interior crisis,” he said.

In June 1992, Pope John Paul II named Bergoglio auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires, on the recommendation of the city’s archbishop Antonio Quarracino, to whom he had grown close. He succeeded Quarracino upon his death in 1998, became a cardinal in 2001 and president of the Argentine bishops conference in 2005. He was Buenos Aires archbishop until Pope Benedict XVI resigned.

Setting a new tone as Pope

On Feb. 11, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to announce his resignation in about 600 years, since Gregory XII in 1415. The College of Cardinals elected Bergoglio on March 13th on the fifth ballot in one of the fastest papal conclaves.

“Clearly the Cardinals were looking for something and someone different, and so his very otherness may have been appealing,” James Martin, the Jesuit priest and editor-at-large at America, wrote for TIME.com two days after Bergoglio was elected pope. “Particularly in light of the Vatileak scandals, the Cardinals may have been searching for someone who could take a fresh look at things and move the bureaucracy in a new direction. On the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, as he addressed the crowd, Pope Francis joked about his Latin American origins. It seemed, he said, that the Cardinals had to go to the ‘ends of the earth’ to find a Pope. But often someone from the margins is just what the center needs.”

Initially there was concern about whether he could breathe new life into the church if he was missing a lung—the Vatican clarified that part of his lung was removed after a bout of severe pneumonia when he was a 21 year old seminary student—but Francis hit the ground running. His actions in his first year made clear that business as usual was not going to be sufficient. For example, within his first year as Pontiff, a commission to investigate the Vatican bank was created. The commission conducted an audit, which led to the bank’s first financial report in 125 years.

He was also seen as more openminded—less doctrinaire—on pressing lifestyle questions among churchgoers. While Pope Benedict described homosexuality in 2005 as “an objective disorder” and “a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral evil,” Francis made headlines in 2013 for saying, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” In December 2023, Pope Francis approved a new rule allowing priests to bless same-sex couples, though that didn’t mean the Vatican approved of same-sex marriage. Throughout his papacy he maintained that gay marriage is not marriage. In his first major document on family issues, the 2016 Amoris Laetitia, he stated that “de facto or same-sex unions, for example, may not simply be equated with marriage.”

In a move toward reform, the document also represented a milestone for encouraging church communities to be more welcoming of divorced people. He also loosened red tape in the process for couples seeking annulments. Though the document maintained that divorced Catholics who remarry without an annulment aren’t supposed to receive communion at Mass, he reiterated in a footnote a line he has said in the past, that “the Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak.” He also wrote that “No one can be condemned forever, because that is not the logic of the Gospel! Here I am not speaking only of the divorced and remarried, but of everyone, in whatever situation they find themselves.”

He also aimed to more fully acknowledge women in the church, hailing “unknown and forgotten” mothers and grandmothers and the “genius” of female saints. In January 2019, he appointed the first woman to hold a senior managerial position in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State office by naming layperson Francesca di Giovanni to be a point-person for diplomatic relations. His 2018 Apostolic Exhortation (meaning a statement issued by a pope) “Gaudete et Exsultate” (“Rejoice and Be Glad”), featured women in a way that some papal watchers found progressive—such as by acknowledging that “unknown or forgotten women … sustained and transformed families and communities”—but he took them down a peg by also writing, “Their lives may not always have been perfect, yet even amid their faults and failings they kept moving forward and proved pleasing to the Lord.”

Thus, Jamie L. Manson, a self-described queer Catholic pundit at National Catholic Reporter, argued the pope was merely “reasserting … his belief that women’s most essential vocation, and her true path to holiness, comes in motherhood and nurturing her family.”

He was also firm that priests are supposed to be men. He expressed some openness to female deacons—and in August 2016 created a commission to explore that option—but a couple of months later he maintained, “On the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, the last word is clear.” He was also tentatively open to the idea of allowing married men to become priests in areas where they’re desperately needed, and in October 2019 a meeting of bishops convened by Pope Francis endorsed this exact idea in the Amazon region. But the pope tabled that proposal in a letter revealed in February 2020.

The next month, Pope Francis found himself leading a global church during a global pandemic. On Mar. 27, 2020—with the Vatican in lockdown, and church services livestreaming worldwide—the Pontiff delivered a special blessing to an empty, rain-covered St. Peter’s Square, urging Catholics feeling “afraid and lost” to maintain their faith.

Addressing the sex abuse crisis

The child sex abuse scandals have been a black eye on the Catholic Church over the past two decades, and the issue was far from resolved during Pope Francis’s tenure. He faced accusations that he didn’t do enough or was still part of an antiquated system that protected accused priests at the expense of victims.

About a year into his papacy, he claimed that “no-one else has done more” than the church in cracking down on pedophiles in the clergy, hailing its “transparency.” During his first meeting with the people who had been sexually abused by priests in July 2014, he characterized those clerics as a “sacrilegious cult.”

As bombshell revelations about victims continued, it became clear that the pope’s “legacy is at stake” with his approach to the sex abuse scandal “and the viability of the Catholic Church itself,” as Christopher J. Hale, who helped run Catholic outreach for President Barack Obama put it in a Feb. 2018 op-ed for TIME.

Hale’s op-ed came on the heels of the pope’s first visit to Chile the month prior, when he came under fire for standing by Juan Barros, the Chilean bishop he appointed to head the diocese of Osorno, Chile; Barros was accused of covering up for his mentor Rev. Fernando Karadima, who, in 2011, was found guilty of sexually abusing minors in Chile and sentenced to a “life of prayer and penitence. Francis said he was “convinced” of Barros’ innocence in this matter and called the accusations that Barros covered up for Karadima “calumny” and said “there is not a single proof against him.” He called for a Vatican investigation. After listening to dozen of testimonies, he publicly apologized in April for “serious mistakes” in reading the situation. “I was part of the problem,” Pope Francis reportedly told Chilean victims of sexual abuse who visited the Pope at the Vatican in May 2018. Barros resigned the next month.

He did take decisive actions on the issue over the next year. He made history in February 2019 by de-frocking Theodore McCarrick, an ex-cardinal accused of sexual abuse. It appeared to mark the first time a cardinal has been expelled over such allegations, and the first time an American cardinal has been banned from the priesthood. To enable clergy to report sex abuse claims to law enforcement, he also nixed a 2001 decree that had allowed church officials to classify sex abuse allegations as “pontifical secrets”—the most secretive of church doings.

Championing climate change

Living up to Francis of Assisi’s recognition as the patron saint of ecology and the poor, the pope released a groundbreaking June 2015 climate encyclical Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, arguing climate change was undeniable and disproportionately impacting developing countries. It came ahead of the Paris climate accords. Addressing a community of the faithful divided on whether humans caused climate change or whether climate change is a serious problem, the 184-page document said humans feel “entitled to plunder her [the Earth] at will” and described climate change as “one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day” and “a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods.”

Top economist and sustainable development expert Jeffrey Sachs described it as playing a “huge role” in getting predominantly Catholic nations onboard with the Paris Agreement, according to Ivereigh.

The ‘world’s parish priest’

His modest lifestyle was also part of his appeal. Dating back to taking public transportation as archbishop in Buenos Aires and opting for apartment living, as pope he chose to live in a penthouse apartment in Saint Martha’s house, adjacent to Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, because he thought the Apostolic Palace was too extravagant. He was nicknamed the “world’s parish priest” for his modesty, and he demonstrated it with acts including washing the feet of a dozen local inmates in the walk-up to Easter—noting that bishops must be servants. On Sep. 4, 2016, he proclaimed Mother Teresa, famous for serving the poor in Calcutta, India, a saint.

Just as Saint Francis of Assisi traveled to Egypt to try and stop the Crusades, Pope Francis traveled to the region to promote tolerance between Christians and Muslims. In February 2019, he became the first pope to visit an Arab Gulf state by going to the United Arab Emirates and leading what is believed to be the largest act of Christian public worship on the Arabian peninsula. He and Ahmed el-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar and the equivalent of the Pope to Sunni worshipers, co-signed a landmark “The Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together” in an effort to set a new tone for peaceful relations between Islam and Christianity, the world’s biggest religions, at a time when the migrant crisis exacerbated anti-Muslim sentiment that escalated after the September 11th terror attacks.

Pope Francis also tried to repair the church’s relations with indigenous groups. In July 2022, he embarked on a week-long “pilgrimage of penance” in Canada, publicly apologizing for residential boardings schools run by church missionaries, notorious for decades of physical and emotional abuse. “I’m here to remember the past, and to cry with you,” he told an audience of indigenous Canadians and survivors, before receiving a high honor usually reserved for indigenous chiefs.

Pope Francis sets Instagram record—and becomes ‘cool’

He embraced social media to reach worshippers worldwide. He was the first Pope to host a Google Hangout and when he joined Instagram in 2016, he set a record for most followers gained in a single day after racking up over 1.4 million followers in less than 12 hours. His presence on social media earned him a reputation as a “cool” pope. “People will approach me to say, ‘I’ve been away from the Church for a year but Pope Francis is drawing me back,’ or ‘I’m not a Catholic, but I sure love this pope,” as Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, put it in a 2018 interview. “He’s helping people take a fresh look at the Catholic Church.” At the same time, he recognized that social media theoretically makes it easier to put a message out to worshippers—even as he fretted about shorter attention spans. “The technological and cultural shifts that have marked this period of history have made the transmission of faith increasingly difficult,” he says in Ivereigh’s book.

In October 2019—six years after becoming pope and at age 82—he took steps seen as shoring up his legacy: appointing 13 new cardinals on a similar wavelength in terms of policy priorities, and hailing from diverse countries like Morocco, Indonesia, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He even talked openly about dying. On a 2014 flight from South Korea to the Vatican, in response to a question about how he feels about global fame, he told reporters, “I try to think of my sins, my mistakes, not to become proud. Because I know it will last only a short time. Two or three years and then I’ll be off to the Father’s house.” Of course, he lived longer, but in a video message to a gathering of youth in Mexico City in October 2019, he talked about a more timeless philosophy of death as a reality check and making the most of what you do while alive: “It is death that allows life to remain alive! … It is a slap in the face to our illusion of omnipotence.”

source https://time.com/5762436/pope-francis-dies-obituary/

Hegseth Comes Under Fire Amid Reports of Sharing Sensitive Info in Another Signal Group Chat

“Another day, another old story,” said Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell in a statement. But while the news he was responding to on Sunday may have sounded familiar, it was in fact new.

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After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Cabinet officials were revealed last month to have discussed U.S. military strikes on Yemen in a Signal chat group that mistakenly included the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, new reports suggest Hegseth may have shared similar attack details in another chat on the same commercial messaging platform—this time, with a group that reportedly included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

The New York Times first reported on Hegseth’s second sensitive Signal chat, citing four unnamed sources with knowledge of the chat. CNN also reported on it, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the chat, while the Associated Press confirmed the Times’ reporting, citing an anonymous source familiar with the chat’s contents and participants.

Hegseth and the Trump Administration faced heavy criticism about the implications for national security after the initial leak report last month, with some Congress members even calling on the Defense Secretary to step down. The Administration and GOP allies, however, downplayed the controversy, with President Trump himself accusing critics of making “a big deal” out of his Administration’s “only glitch in two months.”

“The details keep coming out,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X after the latest reports. “We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him. Pete Hegseth must be fired.”

Parnell, the Pentagon spokesperson who was also reportedly a member of the second chat group, insisted there was “no classified information in any Signal chat” and that the reports are evidence that the “Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda.”

Here’s what to know.

What information was in the second Signal chat?

The Times reported that some of the information in the newly revealed Signal chat group, which was named “Defense | Team Huddle,” included flight schedules for F/A-18 Hornet combat aircraft targeting the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The report described it as “essentially the same attack plans” that Hegseth had shared in the Signal group chat called “Houthi PC small group” that included top national security officials as well as the Atlantic’s Goldberg.

Hegseth reportedly accessed the chat on a private phone distinct from his government-issued device. He created it to discuss “routine administrative or scheduling information,” according to two of the Times’ sources, who noted that the Defense Secretary did not typically use the chat to discuss sensitive military operations.

Who was in the second Signal chat?

Besides Hegseth and Parnell, the “Defense | Team Huddle” chat also reportedly included Hegseth’s younger brother Phil, who works in the Pentagon as a Department of Homeland Security senior adviser and liaison.

It also reportedly included Tim Parlatore, Hegseth’s personal lawyer, whom Hegseth commissioned last month as a Navy commander in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

It’s unclear what level of security clearance Phil Hegseth or Parlatore may have, given their government roles, but Hegseth’s wife Jennifer, a former Fox News producer who was also reportedly a member of the chat, does not have an official government role. The Defense Secretary has been previously scrutinized for including his wife in sensitive meetings with foreign officials. 

The chat also reportedly included two former senior advisers to Hegseth: Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick. Caldwell and Selnick, along with former deputy defense secretary chief of staff Colin Carroll, were fired days earlier, ostensibly after an investigation into leaks. The three issued a statement asserting their innocence and claiming they’ve been “slandered” while maintaining that they “remain supportive of the Trump-Vance Administration’s mission to make the Pentagon great again.”

The “Defense | Team Huddle” chat also reportedly included Joe Kasper, the Defense Secretary’s chief of staff who reportedly requested the leak investigation and is set to leave his post for a new role at the Pentagon amid the turmoil.

Why is the Trump Administration blaming disgruntled ex-employees?

Parnell, in his statement, criticized the Times “and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage” for “enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article.” The Times as well as CNN and the AP did not name their sources. “They relied only on the words of people who were fired this week and appear to have a motive to sabotage the Secretary and the President’s agenda,” Parnell claimed.

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly similarly dismissed the reports, saying in a statement to the AP: “No matter how many times the legacy media tries to resurrect the same non-story, they can’t change the fact that no classified information was shared.” Kelly also blamed disgruntled ex-employees, adding: “Recently-fired ‘leakers’ are continuing to misrepresent the truth to soothe their shattered egos and undermine the President’s agenda, but the administration will continue to hold them accountable.”

Hours after the Times reported on the existence of the second sensitive Signal group chat, John Ullyot, who resigned as acting Defense Department press secretary last week, published a tell-all op-ed for Politico in which he painted a portrait of “total chaos” and “disarray” at the Pentagon under Hegseth.

Ullyot described Hegseth’s recent firing of Caldwell, Selnick, and Carroll—“three of his most loyal senior staffers”—as “strange and baffling” and potentially just the beginning of a broader “purge.” He also suggested that the leak allegations against the three officials were unfounded. “Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door,” Ullyot wrote. 

“The dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president,” Ullyot asserted, warning that there may yet be “more shoes to drop in short order” and “even bigger bombshell stories coming this week.” Given Trump’s “strong record of holding his top officials to account,” he added, “it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.”

What are the reactions so far?

The fresh news of Hegseth potentially disclosing sensitive information in another Signal chat has already prompted sharp rebuke from some Democratic lawmakers.

Sen. Jack Reed (D, R.I.), the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that Hegseth “must immediately explain” and urged the Defense Department’s Inspector General Office to include the latest allegations in its ongoing investigation of Hegseth’s mishandling of classified information. “If true, this incident is another troubling example of Secretary Hegseth’s reckless disregard for the laws and protocols that every other military servicemember is required to follow,” Reed said.

Sen. Andy Kim. (D., N.J.) posted on X: “I’ll say it again—Hegseth needs to resign. There was more than enough from the last Signal leak to show he is not fit to lead our military.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D, N.Y.) posted on X that Hegseth “recklessly used an unsecured app to discuss war plans with senior officials. Now we know he also shared those sensitive details with his family over Signal, even after being explicitly warned not to. Republicans must join me in calling on him to resign immediately.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D, Ill.) also called on Hegseth to resign, posting on X: “How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he isn’t only a f*cking liar, he is a threat to our national security? Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity.”

source https://time.com/7278921/hegseth-second-signal-chat-wife-brother-lawyer-defense-reactions-resign/

Let’s Break Down How The Last of Us Handles That Major Death in Season 2

Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 2.

Let’s get right to it: In the second episode of Season 2 of The Last of Us, a woman named Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) brutally murders Joel (Pedro Pascal) in front of Ellie (Bella Ramsey). This may have come as a shock to those unfamiliar with the game, but not to those who played as both Ellie and Abby in The Last of Us Part II. Game lovers (and haters) have been waiting for the TV show-only audiences to see and process this Red Wedding-esque plot point for years.

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Here’s a look at what happened on the show, how it differs from the game, why the character of Abby set off a bit of a firestorm in the gaming community, and how this act of vengeance sets up the rest of the series (without any spoilers past Episode 2).

How Joel dies

Last season, Joel ushered Ellie to the Salt Lake City hideout of a rebel group called the Fireflies. There, they planned to study Ellie, who is immune to zombie bites, to create a cure for the infection that jumpstarted the apocalypse. But when Joel realized that the operation would kill her, he murdered 18 Fireflies and one doctor to save an unconscious Ellie and take her to Jackson where Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) lived.

We meet Abby in Season 2, Episode 1. After Joel killed her father, the doctor who was supposed to operate on Ellie, she and her friends moved to Seattle, trained as military, and set out on a mission to hunt down Joel. By episode 2, the former Fireflies make it to an area just outside Jackson and see how heavily fortified the city is. While Abby is determined to carry out their plan to murder Joel, all of her friends want to turn back.

Abby sets out on a patrol and accidentally awakens a swarm of infected zombies. She is saved by Joel, who happens to be on patrol with Dina (Isabela Merced), Ellie’s friend and love interest. The group is too far from Jackson to return to the city, and Abby leads them to a lodge where her friends are hiding out.

Meanwhile, the infected attack the city of Jackson en masse. Thousands of zombies sprint through the snow and ice to throw themselves against the high walls of the city. The people inside push the zombies back with exploding gasoline tanks, gunfire, and flamethrowers. There’s even an extra giant zombie that breaches the wall. It’s all very wights attacking the Wall on Game of Thrones.

Ellie and Jesse (Young Mazino), Dina’s ex-boyfriend, set out to look for Joel and Dina when they don’t respond on the radio. Meanwhile, at the lodge, Abby has ordered her friends to drug Dina so she won’t be conscious for Joel’s murder. Abby then threatens Dina’s life to get Joel to admit that he killed over a dozen Fireflies in Salt Lake. Abby then shoots Joel in the leg, beats him with a gulf club, and punches him bloody. Ellie arrives just in time to witness the death of her father figure. Abby’s friends disarm Ellie, and then Abby murders Joel in front of Ellie’s eyes. 

It’s not a spoiler to say that brutally murdering Joel in front of Ellie is a huge mistake and kicks off a cycle of bloody vengeance.

The scene sparked a controversy around Abby in the game

As you can imagine, Abby’s murder of Joel did not go over well with the fandom when it occurred early on in the gameplay of The Last of Us Part II. The game forces players to play as both Ellie and Abby, and the lead-up to the encounter between Abby and Joel is shot from Abby’s perspective. Essentially, it puts the players in the shoes of a person who conspires to murder the beloved protagonist of the first game.

The great innovation of The Last of Us Part II was this switch in perspectives, which continues throughout the game. By playing as both Ellie and Abby in different parts of the story, the player is meant to understand where each woman is coming from as she tries to avenge the death of her respective father figure, while also growing increasingly horrified by the monstrous acts she commits in this quest. But even as the game eventually builds some empathy for Abby, she remains a wildly controversial character reviled by a certain subsection of gamers. The actor who voiced Abby received threats against both her and her newborn son. Some of that hatred was rooted in misogyny and other biases, while some was simply born of frustration with the storytelling device. 

Read more: Everything You Need to Know About Abby, The Last of Us’ Most Controversial Character

How Joel’s TV death differs from the game

In the game, Joel and Tommy save Abby from infected while out on patrol. In the show, Joel is on patrol with Dina instead when they find Abby. Abby’s friends are much kinder to Dina in the show than they are to Tommy in the game: They drug her, whereas they knock Tommy out by hitting him repeatedly over the head with a bottle. In the game, Abby and her gang also knock Ellie out after Joel dies by kicking her in the head.

The showrunners probably made that Dina-Tommy swap to accommodate another change. In the game, there is no zombie attack on Jackson. But in the show, Abby accidentally sets loose a horde of infected onto the city, probably for the sake of adding an extra action set piece early in the season. Since Tommy is not on patrol with Joel when the incursion happens, he is able to help guard the city and safeguard its people.

In terms of Abby’s friends being queasier as they watch Abby torture Joel, the series creators may be trying to build more sympathy for the characters given how negatively the gaming audience reacted early in the game to Abby and her compatriots when the game was released.

What it means for the rest of the season

In the game, Tommy is as obsessed with avenging Joel’s death as Ellie is—if not more so. A few detail changes suggest that Ellie will be the driving force of their mission of vengeance in the show rather than Tommy. Not only was Tommy not present for his brother’s murder in the show, as he was in the game, but he also has fatherly responsibilities in the TV series. (He’s married but has no children in the game.) 

As a result, it’s possible that he takes a more cautious approach to hunting down Abby in the show than in the game, and it’s Ellie who is largely responsible for running headlong into Seattle to track the former Fireflies.

As for Joel, I am willing to bet we haven’t seen the last of him this season. Without spoiling anything, Joel does briefly pop up in game flashbacks, and it’s hard to imagine he won’t make a cameo or two in the remainder of series. Pedro Pascal is a movie star after all. You don’t waste the precious time you have with him on set.

Plus there are a few dangling threads in Joel’s story. We don’t know what, exactly, broke the relationship between Joel and Ellie, whether it was gradual or whether a specific incident sparked Ellie’s anger. To that end, the show creators introduced Catherine O’Hara as Joel’s therapist Gail in the first episode of Season 2. Gail is an entirely new show creation. Surely, she will appear again. Perhaps we get more therapy settings in flashback form. We also learned that Joel killed Gail’s husband when he became infected. That’s another moment we could yet see onscreen. And, of course, the writers could plumb Ellie’s memories for moments with Joel as she mourns his death.

source https://time.com/7278526/the-last-of-us-joel-death-abby-season-2/

Harvard Teaches U.S. Leaders a Valuable Lesson

President Trump’s unprovoked attack on higher education was a call to action which has been answered by Harvard and leaders from over 100 other schools. It has also taught an important lesson: giving in to Trump’s attacks is not a sustainable strategy for any organization.

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Several leaders of the nation’s top law firms appeared to capitulate to Trump’s demands only to find that he is reportedly reneging from formal commitments and demanding more. Even schools such as Columbia, who attempted to concede to Trump’s demands found those agreements failed. History has long taught us that such appeasement doesn’t work when concession is seen as weakness—or even as surrender.

The recent assaults by the Trump administration on American colleges and universities were exemplified by the demands issued to Harvard University in an April 11 letter. Harvard rejecting Trump’s demands was followed by the freezing of $2.2 billion of federal research funds along with Trump’s taunting threats to Harvard’s tax-exempt status. 

The grab to seize control of a private enterprise has catalyzed support for the independence of higher education, perhaps our nation’s most globally competitive sector. The outcry extends far beyond the ivy walls of academia. Even critics of higher education and Trump allies believe Trump is dramatically overplaying his hand. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, hardly a friend of Harvard’s, blasted Trump’s overreach in an editorial titled “Trump Tries to Run Harvard.” “There are good reasons to oppose this unprecedented attempt by government to micromanage a private university,” the Journal opinion editors wrote. “Many of his demands on the school exceed his power under the Constitution.” Meanwhile, another regular critic of Harvard, FIRE, which assesses freedom of expression on campus, condemned Trump’s “unconstitutional demands” and told Harvard to stand strong. 

Trump’s attacks against Harvard, and Harvard’s defiance, may even be shifting public opinion. According to a survey of 114,000 adults by Morning Consult, favorability of the school has risen since Trump took office in January. And in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s attacks, alumni pride—and donations—have swelled.

Arbitrary assaults on higher education—and bypassing legally required due process—undermine not only intellectual creativity on campus, but also the special contributions of universities to American society. Higher education is one of the greatest sources of U.S. global competitiveness, cultural enrichment, and learning, and economic prosperity.

For instance, the trade surplus from higher education accounts for nearly 14% of total U.S. services trade surplus—comparable to the combined exports of soybeans, coal, and natural gas. A global magnet, international student tuitions contribute roughly $44 billion to the U.S. economy. When the Trump administration attacks higher education, it is also threatening a prime source of the opportunity and economic prosperity of all Americans—one which has improved socio-economic mobility and access to opportunity, and trained millions of highly skilled workers

But even beyond the economic contributions, by partnering with the federal government for decades, American universities have also made lifesaving discoveries and have helped increase the average lifespan of Americans to record levels over the last few decades. 

As one of the leading education institutions in the world, it is no secret that Harvard has received a range of criticism in recent years. However Harvard has redeemed itself this week.

The decision of Harvard President Alan Garber to take a stand by rejecting the Trump administration’s demands, and the strong leadership of Harvard’s board, led by Chair Penny Pritzker and buttressed by board members, including former Merck CEO Ken Frazier, Ken Chenault, Karen Gordon Mills, Biddy Martin, and others, is a watershed moment.

It is propitious that Harvard’s defiance against authoritarian creep should come on the 250^th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride which alerted the American minutemen to rise up against tyranny. Indeed, his fellow sentry William Dawes actually rode across Harvard’s campus in 1775.

This current battle will not be an easy one for Harvard, but Harvard is not alone—as pillars of civil society muster the courage to stand in unison so that Harvard does not have to fight for freedom of expression, intellectual inquiry, educational advancement, and research contributions alone. Indeed, this is a moment when all those who care about the contributions that U.S. universities in partnership with the federal government have made to a competitive and flourishing American society to speak out.  

This battle is one as vital as higher education has ever faced. The legal community was late to realize this lesson but schools can be good teachers as well as fast learners. 

source https://time.com/7278903/harvard-teaches-leaders-valuable-lesson/

Do You Need a Measles Vaccine Booster?

Amid the measles outbreak that started in Texas and is now believed to have spread to four other states, many people might be wondering: do I need to get a measles vaccine booster?

Measles is a highly contagious airborne disease that can lead to severe complications, including death. It’s also vaccine preventable through the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, which is typically administered in childhood in two doses. More than two decades ago, measles was declared eliminated from the U.S., thanks in large part to a successful vaccination program. But in recent years, vaccination rates have declined and measles cases have soared. In 2024, there were 285 reported measles cases in the country, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Four months into 2025, the agency has received reports of 800 confirmed measles cases. Of those, 96% were in people who were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status.

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So far in 2025, two children in Texas have died of measles-related complications; both of them were unvaccinated. A third person, an unvaccinated adult in New Mexico, tested positive for measles after death, though the official cause of death is still under investigation, according to the CDC. Before this year, the last confirmed measles death in the U.S. was in 2015, according to the CDC.

Read More: Why Measles Cases Are Rising Right Now

Public health experts say that the best way to protect yourself against measles is to get vaccinated. The MMR vaccine is safe and effective; according to the CDC, two doses are 97% effective against measles. People who don’t get the MMR vaccine in childhood can still get it later in life, says Dr. Ravi Jhaveri, a professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the division head of pediatric infectious diseases at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. 

The CDC has said that most people who get the MMR vaccine will be protected for life, and there are no official recommendations to get a third dose of the vaccine during a measles outbreak.

“The vast majority of people with two doses are protected [and] do not come down with measles,” Jhaveri says. “We have decades upon decades of experience that two doses has been safe and effective, and when we maintained two doses at a very high level across our population, we were seeing very few, if any, outbreaks.”

Still, that doesn’t mean a booster is never needed for other types of diseases. According to Jhaveri, there are two important factors that help make that determination: the genetic variability of the virus and the nature of your immunity. The viruses causing the flu and COVID-19, for instance, have a lot of genetic variability, which is why public health experts recommend getting a new vaccine against those viruses every year. People also get booster shots for tetanus because antibody levels against the bacteria wane over time and if someone has a high-risk exposure—such as stepping on a rusty nail—doctors err on the side of vaccinating them afterward, Jhaveri says. But measles, he says, is more genetically stable and both doses of the MMR vaccine “allow for you to have antibody levels that are high enough to protect you and also allow your cells to respond in case you are exposed, to prevent you from getting infected.”

Jhaveri says that, as people get older, their immune system typically doesn’t work as well, so “theoretically, there may be some drop in measles immunity.” Only about three out of 100 people who are fully vaccinated against measles will get the disease if they are exposed to the virus, according to the CDC. But a vaccinated person who does get the measles typically has much milder symptoms and is less likely to spread the disease to others, compared to someone who is unvaccinated. According to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, about 90% of unvaccinated people who are exposed to the virus will get measles.

There is a group of people who may need to consider getting vaccinated again: according to the CDC, people vaccinated before 1968 with an older version of the vaccine, an inactivated one, should be revaccinated with at least one dose of the vaccine we use now, a live attenuated measles vaccine. That’s because the inactivated vaccine, which was available from 1963 to 1967, was not as effective as the version we use now.

Jhaveri points out that the ongoing outbreak is mostly among unvaccinated people, not those who have been vaccinated, and so getting a third dose would be unnecessary.

“The reason we’re seeing outbreaks now is because we have big pockets across our population that aren’t getting those two doses,” Jhaveri says. “So convincing the people who are doing the right thing to do it more is not where the effort really needs to go; it’s to convince those people who don’t see the benefit of the two doses … that they should get vaccinated.”

source https://time.com/7278878/do-you-need-a-measles-vaccine-booster/

The Trump Administration Could Have Fought to Deport Abrego Garcia in 2019. It Passed on the Chance

During his first term, Donald Trump’s administration had a chance to challenge Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s protection from deportation, but didn’t take it, according to court documents reviewed by TIME. In October 2019, an immigration judge decided Abrego Garcia shouldn’t be removed because of violent gang threats he faced if he returned to El Salvador. Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement had 30 days to appeal that ruling. No appeal was filed, according to the court documents.

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The little-noticed episode was a key part of the long saga of Abrego Garcia, the Salvadorian sheet metal apprentice living in Maryland who was accused of being an MS-13 gang member and mistakenly sent in March by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. And it points to the main beef the courts have with Trump over his deportation actions: Trump can deport people from the country, but when he does, he has to follow the law.

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Abrego Garcia was marched into CECOT prison on March 15. On Thursday, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat, met with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador. Van Hollen posted a photo on X of himself sitting at a table with coffee cups and glasses of water in front of them. Abrego Garcia is dressed in a short-sleeved plaid shirt and is wearing a white Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl championship hat. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele mocked the meeting on X and wrote that Abrego Garcia won’t be released, saying “he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody.”

Trump officials have acknowledged that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was an “administrative error” but have refused to correct it. The Supreme Court ruled on April 10 that the Trump administration must “facilitate” his release from prison in El Salvador and ensure his case is “handled as it would have been” if he hadn’t been improperly sent to El Salvador.  But so far, the Trump administration has done nothing.

Instead, the Trump administration has worked overtime to convict Abrego Garcia in the court of public opinion. On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security published a temporary restraining order that Abrego Garcia’s wife had filed against him in 2021 that said he had “punched and scratched” and “grabbed and bruised” her, and police reports detailing his alleged gang affiliation under the headline: “THE REAL STORY: Kilmar Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 Gang member with a History of Violence.”

What the Supreme Court has demanded, though, is not proof Abrego Garcia has never done anything wrong. The court demands that the Trump administration follow the procedures laid out in the law for removing someone from the country.

The U.S. District Court Judge handling Abrego Garcia’s case, Paula Xinis, has ordered officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to sit for depositions by April 23 about how his removal was handled and allowed Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to demand documents about his case.

When the Trump administration tried to quash those instructions at the Fourth Circuit court of appeals, three federal judges said Trump must comply. “The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” wrote conservative circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan. Even though the Trump administration asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13, the judge wrote, “he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order.”

Abrego Garcia’s deportation had been prohibited in 2019 because an immigration judge granted him “withholding of removal.” When the immigration judge considered his case, Abrego Garcia was being held in immigration detention after being arrested by Prince George’s County police in a Home Depot parking lot. A “gang field interview” sheet released by the Justice Department on Wednesday describes him wearing “a Chicago Bulls hat and a hoodie with rolls of money covering the eyes, ears, and mouth of the presidents.” Police said the clothing was “indicative of the Hispanic gang culture.”

The immigration judge had looked at the information alleging Abrego Garcia’s gang ties provided by the Department of Homeland Security and determined it wasn’t sufficient to prove he was a member of the gang, according to court documents. Instead, the judge gave weight to testimony from his family that a separate gang called Barrio 18 in El Salvador had threatened Abrego Garcia with death because his family would not pay the gang protection money. The judge acknowledged that Abrego Garcia’s case wasn’t a slam dunk. “This case is a close call,” Judge David M. Jones wrote in his order. At the end of the order is a line that says “each party has the right to appeal this decision” within 30 days.

That decision was still on the books when Abrego Garcia was placed on a plane to El Salvador last month. The Bureau of Immigration Appeals database logs the status of immigration cases by unique identifiers called “A-Numbers,” short for Alien Registration Numbers. Abrego Garcia’s entry shows his application for “withholding of removal” was granted on Oct. 10, 2019. Below that is the message: “No appeal was received for this case.” The White House, DHS and ICE did not reply to requests for comment.

John Sandweg, who was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Obama administration, says that ICE attorneys would usually appeal such a decision if they thought that the person was a public safety threat. “I do think that’s indicative that they didn’t have serious concerns about this guy from a public safety perspective,” Sandweg says. “Otherwise, in cases where they do, they absolutely appeal.” 

source https://time.com/7278832/trump-caved-on-abrego-garcia-deportation-move-in-2019/

There’s a Climate Showdown Ahead for Big Oil Investors

Votes to elect board members of major corporations are typically pro forma affairs. Companies make their recommendations, and shareholders certify it, usually with near unanimity. That wasn’t the case this week at BP’s closely watched annual meeting. On Thursday, nearly a quarter of BP’s shareholders voted against the oil and gas major’s current chairman. It was a stunning rebuke of the company’s management.

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The dissatisfaction with BP’s direction is driven by a constellation of factors. While different for every shareholder, it ultimately boils down to how the company has sought to address climate change. On one end of the spectrum, institutional investors are dismayed at the company’s pullback from its ambitious climate targets. On the other end, hedge funds and other short-term investors want to slim down long-term bets on the energy transition and focus instead on securing better returns as soon as possible.

This dynamic isn’t isolated to BP and it’s not going away anytime soon. With trillions in capital on the line, not to mention the fate of the planet, investors will continue to wrestle with how to reward and punish businesses for their climate work. It strikes right at the heart of the climate challenge for companies: the need to create long-term value while still generating competitive returns in the short term.    

For the last several decades, debates over the future of oil and gas firms in a climate-changed world have occupied investors, climate activists, corporate executives, and policymakers. Unsurprisingly, the range of views is wide. Some argue that oil and gas companies should stick to what they know best and ignore the climate challenge altogether. Others, meanwhile, say oil and gas companies should use their massive balance sheets to embrace the energy transition and fund renewables, turning themselves into diversified energy companies. Many, particularly U.S. firms, have embraced an approach where they invest in clean technologies that are close to their core competencies—think of hydrogen or carbon capture.   

BP took the most aggressive position of the so-called supermajors. In 2020, it said it would cut oil and gas production by at least 35% by 2030 and invest $5 billion annually in energy transition projects. “We can create value for our shareholders through this shift,” then-CEO Bernard Looney told me in 2020. “And we would argue that we will create more value through this shift than we would if we keep doing what we’re doing.”

So what happened? First, the market shifted. Oil and gas prices rose, so BP trimmed their renewables plan to take advantage of higher prices. And then Elliott Investment Management—a hedge fund known for aggressively pushing companies to change practices—came along, turning a pullback into a u-turn. In February, new reports revealed that Elliott had bought a 5% stake in BP with an eye to getting it to ditch its renewable program entirely, double down on oil and gas, and boost the short-term share price. The markets rewarded the news, and that same month BP announced an even bigger pivot away from renewable energy. 

But the short-term bump in the stock price obscures a much more complicated picture. As a governance matter, some investors complained that the pivots are too chaotic. And major institutional investors like Legal & General and Robeco, both of which manage hundreds of billions in assets, have also expressed concern about whether BP’s new approach is durable in the energy transition. “We are deeply concerned by the recent substantive revisions made to the company’s strategy,” Legal & General wrote in a statement on its website.

All of which created a perfect storm for this week’s show of dissent. More than 24% voted against BP chair Helge Lund, a symbolic vote given that he had already announced his intention to step down. A search for his successor is underway.

These choppy waters for investor relations will continue as long-term and short-term value creation become increasingly divergent. In the short term, there’s a quick buck to be made as the demand for oil and gas remains high, driven by lingering supply constraints after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and energy intensive AI use (though the U.S.-initiated trade war may temper this somewhat).  

But the long-term picture will look different. Costs continue to decline for clean technologies. And anyone in the industry knows that prices are cyclical. Moreover, the costs of climate change will eventually weigh on the returns of all sectors. In this dynamic, standout firms will be able to thread that very difficult needle: positioning the company for a long-term future while generating short-term returns. As I’ve heard many institutional investors say, “there are no returns on a dead planet.”

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This story is supported by a partnership with Outrider Foundation and Journalism Funding Partners. TIME is solely responsible for the content.

source https://time.com/7278794/bp-vote-climate-change/