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      Justice Alito Reported $900 Concert Tickets From a German Princess

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      Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, a former 1980s party girl and art collector who is now known for her connections to far-right conservatives, told a German news organization the Alitos were “private friends.”On his most recent financial disclosure form, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. reported a single gift: $900 concert tickets from a German princess known for her links to conservative activists.The disclosure does not list the event’s details, including the concert’s name, location or how many tickets the princess provided. But in an interview with a German news organization, the gift provider, Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, described Justice Alito and his wife as “private friends” and said the tickets were for the Regensburg Castle Festival, an annual summer celebration she hosts at her 500-room Bavarian castle.The princess, known in earlier decades as a party-loving, art-collecting aristocrat and who was once christened Princess TNT for her explosive personality, has become known in recent years for her close relationships with several high-profile people who oppose the current pope, as well as with Stephen K. Bannon, the longtime ally of former President Donald J. Trump.The disclosure only heightened the scrutiny around ethics at the Supreme Court, which has been in the spotlight after revelations that some of its members, most notably Justice Clarence Thomas, accepted luxury gifts and travel from wealthy benefactors without disclosing the largess on their mandatory annual financial forms.“No matter the identity of the patron — whether it be a German princess, Queen Bey or the king of Dallas real estate — the justices should not be accepting expensive gifts,” Gabe Roth, who leads Fix the Court, an organization that has been critical of transparency on the court, said in response to Justice Alito’s disclosure. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in 2023.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Zealand Abuse in Care Report Speaks of ‘National Catastrophe’

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      The head of a six-year investigation into mistreatment in orphanages, mental health institutions and elsewhere said it found an “unthinkable national catastrophe” unfolding over decades.More than 200,000 people are estimated to have been abused by state and religious organizations in New Zealand that had been entrusted with their care, according to the final report from a landmark independent inquiry released on Wednesday.The abuse included sexual assault, electric shocks, chemical restraints, medical experimentation, sterilization, starvation and beatings, said the report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry Into Abuse in Care. Many of the victims were children who had been removed from their families and placed in state, religious or foster care.“For some people this meant years or even decades of frequent abuse and neglect,” the report said. “For some it was a lifetime; for others it led to an unmarked grave.”In a statement accompanying the release, Coral Shaw, the inquiry’s chair, described the abuse as an “unthinkable national catastrophe.”The results of the investigation were presented to New Zealand’s Parliament on Wednesday.“I cannot take away your pain, but I can tell you this: Today you are heard and you are believed,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told survivors at a news conference. “The state was supposed to care for you, to protect you, but instead it subjected you to unimaginable physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse.”Mr. Luxon said New Zealand’s government would formally apologize to survivors in November and he committed to implementing a redress process. He did not answer questions on Wednesday about how much he expected it would cost to compensate victims, but the inquiry indicated that the total could reach billions of dollars.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      America’s Gerontocracy Problem Goes Beyond the President

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      Whether or not Joe Biden persists in his run for president, America’s gerontocratic crisis will keep on worsening. But high-profile symptoms like Mr. Biden’s difficulties provide an opportunity to confront the issue — a social form of sclerosis that will persist unless and until more power is transferred from the wrinkled to the rest.Gerontocracy transcends government as a full-scale social phenomenon, in which older people accumulate power of different kinds, and then retain it.This form of power is both old and new. The term “gerontocracy” was popularized a century ago by the Scottish anthropologist J.G. Frazer to refer to a very early form of government, in which power reposed in councils of elders. Since premodern societies valued the past over the future, and the ancestral over the innovative, it was only natural to allocate authority to those with cumulative experience and nearer the realm of the honored dead.When the Constitution imposed an age minimum of 30 (and no maximum) on the Senate, that restriction alone excluded roughly three-quarters of the white population from serving. This set up the distant possibility of our present, in which Mr. Biden could become one of the youngest senators ever when he took his seat at age 30, while Dianne Feinstein (age 90), Robert Byrd (92) and Strom Thurmond (100) all either died in office or just months after retirement.The Supreme Court is also an outpost of elder rule. The Constitution gives federal judges life tenure, so it is entirely up to them when they finally depart, alive or dead. And it is not surprising when they die in the midst of opining on the law: Ruth Bader Ginsburg at 87, William Rehnquist at 80 and Antonin Scalia at 79. At least five federal judges have passed 100 years of age while on the bench.The Supreme Court was quasi-gerontocratic from the start, like the Senate, only more so. The popular and professional ideology of the judicial role emphasizes even more the association of age with wisdom. And the Supreme Court’s oracular purposes, priestly trappings and mystical rituals make it resemble, more than any other American political institution, gerontocratic clubs like the Roman Catholic Church’s College of Cardinals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Italians Respond to Pope’s Slur by Taking Francis to Pride

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      At Saturday’s celebration in Rome, Pope Francis’ image was on cardboard cutouts adorned with flower necklaces. People came dressed as the pope, wore papal hats and said that there was never too much “gayness.”At Rome’s Pride celebration, bare-chested men in pink angel wings danced to Abba songs, women wrapped in rainbow flags kissed, and shimmering drag queens waved from parade floats. And then there was Pope Francis.The pontiff’s image was everywhere. On cardboard cutouts adorned with flower necklaces, on glittery banners, on stickers. Romans came to the Pride parade on Saturday dressed like Francis, wearing papal hats and T-shirts that read, “There is never too much frociaggine,” a reference to an offensive slur against gay men that the pope has been accused of using twice in recent weeks.The slur “is the slogan of the 2024 Pride,” said Martina Lorina, 28, an actress who was holding up a banner bearing the word.After Italian media reported that Pope Francis used the slur at a meeting with priests to complain that there was too much “gayness” in the church, the Vatican apologized.But Rome’s Pride attendees took a different tack to respond to the insult: They made it their own. Pride participants symbolically invited the pope and his slur to the party, using a longtime tactic of the L.G.B.T.Q. community to turn insults into words of pride.“Let’s make him feel how beautiful this frociaggine is,” a participant shouted in the crowd as men dressed as unicorns sang a Britney Spears song and children held hands with their two mothers, their faces covered in glittery rainbows.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Pope Francis Is Accused of Using a Homophobic Slur Again

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      Two prominent Italian news agencies said the pontiff used the term on Tuesday during a meeting with priests, after he was accused of uttering the same word last month while speaking with Italian bishops.Pope Francis repeated an anti-gay slur during a meeting with priests in Rome on Tuesday, Italian news outlets reported, the same offensive term he was accused of using two weeks ago. The Vatican, in summarizing the gathering, said only that the pontiff had cautioned about admitting gay men into Roman Catholic seminaries.The Vatican did not address the reports by two of the most prominent news agencies in Italy, ANSA and Adnkronos, that he had again used the word “frociaggine,” an offensive Italian slang term referring to gay men. The reports cited anonymous sources they said had been present at the meeting.The New York Times could not independently verify the pope’s use of the term. A spokesperson for the Vatican declined to comment late on Tuesday night.The pope was accused of using the same term last month at a private meeting with Italian bishops, according to several people present at the meeting who spoke anonymously to the Italian news media.Those reports ignited widespread backlash and drew an apology from the pope, issued through the director of the Holy See’s press office, who said: “The pope never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms, and he extends his apologies to those who were offended by the use of a term, reported by others.”According to Vatican News, the Holy See’s online news site, Tuesday’s meeting took place at the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome. There, it said in its summary, the pope “spoke about the danger of ideologies in the church” and reiterated that while the church should welcome people “with homosexual tendencies,” it should exercise “prudence” in admitting them into seminaries.The Vatican said the closed-door meeting also addressed “pastoral” and “current” themes, like substance abuse, low voter turnout in elections and the wars in the Middle East, Ukraine and elsewhere.Francis has been widely credited with making moves to welcome the L.G.B.T.Q. community in the Roman Catholic Church, delivering a mostly inclusive message and deciding to allow priests to bless same-sex couples.But the previous reports about the pope’s use of the homophobic slur upset and alienated some members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, within and outside the church.After the reports in May, a gay priest wrote in America magazine, a Jesuit publication, that he was “shocked and saddened” by the remarks and that “we need more than an apology for Pope Francis’ homophobic slur.”The Italian politician Alessandro Zan, who is gay and a prominent champion for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, wrote on social media then: “There is not too much ‘frociaggine’. There are too many homophobes.” More

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      Pope Francis Clears Way for Carlo Acutis to Become First Millennial Saint

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      Pope Francis attributed a second miracle to Carlo Acutis, one of the last steps toward canonization.Pope Francis cleared the way for an Italian teenager to become the first millennial saint by attributing a second miracle to him, the Vatican announced Thursday.The teenager, Carlo Acutis, is often called the patron saint of the internet among Roman Catholics because of his computer skills, which he used to share his faith. He died of leukemia in 2006 when he was just 15.Carlo was born in London to Italian parents and moved with his family to Milan when he was a child. His passion for Catholicism bloomed early, his mother, Antonia Acutis, told The New York Times in an interview in 2020. At 7, he began attending daily mass. His faith inspired his mother to rejoin the church, she said.He was called to serve, finding ways to help those less fortunate and donating to the unhoused, she said. In the months before his death, Carlo used his self-taught digital skills to create a website archiving miracles. He also enjoyed playing soccer and video games.After he died, Ms. Acutis told The Times that people from all over the world had told her about medical miracles, including cures for infertility and cancer, that happened after they prayed to her son.“Carlo was the light answer to the dark side of the web,” his mother said, adding that some admirers had called him an “influencer for God.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYC Mayor Adams Meets Pope Francis at the Vatican

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      The meeting was a highlight for the mayor, who is in Rome to speak at a conference about world peace and often talks about how his Christian faith informs his leadership.Mayor Eric Adams, who talks often about his faith, acknowledged on Saturday that he had felt some uncertainty — if not anxiety — about meeting Pope Francis.But at the Vatican, as Mr. Adams stooped before the pope, he felt any disquiet he had wash away. Pope Francis placed his hand on the mayor’s right arm. Then, the two shook hands.“I think that some people have a level of aura and energy and the ability to just calm people,” said Mr. Adams, who is Christian but not Catholic. “I think that’s what he possessed. In my prayers, I thank God for having the opportunity this morning.”The meeting came on the second day of a three-day trip to Italy for Mr. Adams, who said he is trying to better understand the global conflicts that touch New York. The visit came as the mayor, who is up for re-election next year, faces difficulties in New York City, including lagging poll numbers and a federal investigation into his campaign fund-raising.There was no specific agenda for the meeting between the mayor and the pope, which came as the pope met with participants of a conference about peace. But after the meeting, Mr. Adams said the two spoke about conflicts in Haiti, Africa and the Middle East. They talked about the Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism, a nonprofit created by Robert Kraft, the owner of the N.F.L.’s New England Patriots.“He responded affirmatively and said: ‘Eric, please pray for me as well,’” the mayor said.After their meeting at the Vatican, Mr. Adams said that Pope Francis asked the mayor to pray for him.Vatican MediaWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      No Bias Found in F.B.I. Report on Catholic Extremists

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      Republicans claimed the bureau’s memo was evidence of an anti-conservative strain among F.B.I. ranks, but an internal investigation failed to uncover any “malicious intent.”A memo by the F.B.I. warning of possible threats posed by “radical-traditionalist” Catholics violated professional standards but showed “no evidence of malicious intent,” according to an internal Justice Department inquiry made public on Thursday.Republicans have seized on the 11-page memo, which was leaked early last year, as a talking point. They have pointed to the document to sharply criticize the bureau and suggested, without evidence, that it was part of a broader campaign by the Biden administration to persecute Catholics and conservatives over their beliefs.The memo was quickly withdrawn after being leaked, and top law enforcement officials have repeatedly distanced themselves from it.The assessment by the Justice Department’s watchdog found that agents in the F.B.I.’s office in Richmond, Va., improperly conflated the religious beliefs of activists with the likelihood they would engage in domestic terrorism, making it appear as if they were being targeted for the faith.But after a 120-day review of the incident ordered by Congress, Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general — drawing from the F.B.I. report and interviews conducted by his own investigators — found no evidence that “anyone ordered or directed” anyone to investigate Catholics because of their religion.A statement from the F.B.I. on Thursday said the inspector general’s review aligned with the bureau’s own accounting.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More