Pope Leo XIV calls for peace in Ukraine, a Gaza ceasefire and release of hostages in Sunday appeal

Pope Leo XIV celebrated a private Mass on Sunday near the tomb of St. Peter, before he was to deliver his first Sunday noon blessing from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica.
The Vatican said the pope was joined by the head of his Augustinian order, the Rev. Alejandro Moral Anton. The Mass occurred in the grottoes underneath St. Peter's, the traditional burial place of St. Peter, the apostle who is considered the be the first pope.
The area, which is normally open to the public, also contains the tombs of past popes, including Pope Benedict XVI.
With still an hour to go before Leo was to appear to the public, St. Peter's Square was filing up with pilgrims, well-wishers and the curious, joined by multiple marching bands that made grand entrances into the square.
Leo on Saturday prayed before the tomb of Pope Francis, located across town at the St. Mary Major Basilica.
The 69-year-old Chicago-born missionary was elected 267th pope on Thursday, the first American pope. He appeared to the world from the same loggia, offering a message of peace and unity. (AP)

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Korea Herald

12-06-2025

• Korea Herald

London-bound Air India flight with more than 240 aboard crashes after takeoff from Ahmedabad, India

AHMEDABAD, India (AP) — An Air India passenger plane bound for London with more than 240 people on board crashed Thursday in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad, and there were no known survivors, officials said. Black smoke billowed from the site where the plane went down in a populated area near the airport in Ahmedabad, a city of more than 5 million and the capital of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state. Firefighters doused the smoking wreckage of the plane, which would have been fully loaded with fuel shortly after takeoff, and adjacent multistory buildings with water. Many charred bodies lay on the ground and one was carried away on a stretcher by first responders. 'The scenes emerging of a London-bound plane carrying many British nationals crashing in the Indian city of Ahmedabad are devastating,' British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement. Indian television news channels reported that the plane crashed on top of the dining area of a medical college hostel and visuals showed a portion of the aircraft atop the building. It was unclear if any medical students were present inside the building at the time of the crash. 'It appears there are no survivors in the plane crash,' Police Commissioner G.S. Malik told The Associated Press, 'As the plane has fallen in a residential area which also had offices, some locals would have also died,' he added. "Exact figures on casualties are being ascertained.' Modi called the crash 'heartbreaking beyond words.' 'In this sad hour, my thoughts are with everyone affected,' he said in a social media post. The airline said the Gatwick Airport-bound flight was carrying 242 passengers and crew. Of those, Air India said there were 169 Indians, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, told AP that Air India flight 171, a Boeing 787-8, crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38 p.m. local time. He said 244 people were on board and it was not immediately possible to reconcile the discrepancy with Air India's numbers. All efforts were being made to ensure medical aid and relief support at the site, India's Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu posted on X. The 787 Dreamliner is a widebody, twin-engine plane. This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database. Boeing said it was aware of the reports of the crash and was 'working to gather more information.' The aircraft was introduced in 2009, and more than 1,000 have been delivered to dozens of airlines, according to the flightradar24 website. Air India's chairman, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, said at the moment 'our primary focus is on supporting all the affected people and their families.' He said on X that the airline had set up an emergency center and support team for families seeking information about those who were on the flight. 'Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with the families and loved ones of all those affected by this devastating event,' he said. British Cabinet minister Lucy Powell said the government will provide 'all the support that it can' to those affected by the crash. 'This is an unfolding story, and it will undoubtedly be causing a huge amount of worry and concern to the many, many families and communities here and those waiting for the arrival of their loved ones,' she told lawmakers in the House of Commons. 'We send our deepest sympathy and thoughts to all those families, and the government will provide all the support that it can with those in India and those in this country as well,' she added. Britain has very close ties with India. There were nearly 1.9 million people in the country of Indian descent, according to the 2021 U.K. census. The last major passenger plane crash in India was in 2020, when an Air India Express Boeing-737 skidded off a hilltop runway in southern India, killing 21 people. The worst air disaster in India was on Nov. 12, 1996, when a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided midair with a Kazakhastan Airlines Flight near Charki Dadri in Haryana state, killing all 349 on board the two planes. The crash comes days before the opening of the Paris Air Show, a major aviation expo where Boeing and European rival Airbus will showcase their aircraft and battle for jet orders from airline customers. Boeing has been in recovery mode for more than six years after Lion Air Flight 610 , a Boeing 737 Max 8, plunged into the Java Sea off the coast of Indonesia minutes after takeoff from Jakarta, killing all 189 people on board. Five months later, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 , a Boeing 737 Max 8, crashed after takeoff from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 157 passengers and crew members. Shares of Boeing Co. tumbled nearly 9% before trading opened in the U.S.

Korea Herald

12-06-2025

• Korea Herald

Air India passenger plane with 244 aboard crashes in India's northwestern Ahmedabad city

NEW DELHI (AP) — An Air India passenger plane with 244 people onboard crashed Thursday in India's northwestern city of Ahmedabad, the airline and local media reported. Visuals on local television channels showed smoke billowing from the crash site near the airport in Ahmedabad. Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, the director general of the directorate of civil aviation, told The Associated Press that Air India flight AI 171, a Boeing 787, crashed into a residential area called Meghani Nagar five minutes after taking off at 1:38 pm local time. The flight was bound for London's Gatwick Airport. There were 232 passengers and 12 crew members onboard, and that emergency teams have been activated at the airport, Kidwai said. The 787 Dreamliner is a widebody, twin-engined plane. This is the first crash ever of a Boeing 787 aircraft, according to the Aviation Safety Network database.

Korea Herald

09-06-2025

• Korea Herald

[Lim Woong] Teaching digital natives

When Marc Prensky, an American writer, introduced the term "digital natives" in a 2001 article, he proposed a clear distinction between those born into the digital age and those who had to learn and adapt to digital technologies. Since then, the terminology has expanded: we now hear of digital immigrants, nomads and tribes — each reflecting different relationships with our rapidly evolving technological world. At first glance, today's young generations seem to fit the mold. Instagram stories flash across the screen, demanding attention; TikTok videos compress complex ideas into seconds, often offering little lasting value. Online or mobile gaming isn't just a pastime but a habitat. Travel and self-care trends are curated online, liked and shared. Homework? One Google/Naver search, a YouTube tutorial, a prompt to ChatGPT — and it's done. Yet beneath this surface-level fluency lies a paradox: mastery of digital tools does not equate to mastery of thought or an authentic sense of learning. After all, being skilled in media use or shopping platforms does not necessarily make one discerning, reflective, or resilient. That said, generational labels like "digital natives" or "Generation Z" can help identify broad social patterns. They can guide schools and educators in designing relevant curricula. For example, it's often claimed that digital natives are liberated from rote memorization and traditional knowledge-based schooling. However, memorization is widely regarded as essential by learning scientists. It enables students to retrieve, combine and build upon knowledge. If we abandon memory because "AI can remember for you," we risk losing literacy. The result could be a classroom divided — not only by ability, but by access to AI tools and the ability to think critically about their use, potentially widening educational inequalities. In 'The Anxious Generation,' Jonathan Haidt warns that smartphones and social media are rewiring children's brains. Constant screen exposure increases the risk of dependency, as their brains demand ever more dopamine-triggering content. The consequences? Shortened attention spans, diminished tolerance for complex stories and weakened empathy. Children immersed in short-form media may struggle to process long texts or to interpret emotional subtleties in relationships. These concerns have prompted governments across the globe to restrict or ban smartphone use among children. But meaningful reform demands more than bans — it requires strong civic literacy, critical thinking and the ability to separate fact from disinformation. So it's quite troubling to hear that resistance to smartphone bans in classrooms is framed as a matter of student rights. Allowing unrestricted smartphone use during instruction is akin to handing out soda and YouTube to pacify a public tantrum. Public education must stand for more than appeasement. On the other hand, generational narratives can be misleading. As Rebecca Eynon of the University of Oxford explains, technology use exists on a spectrum shaped by education, gender and socioeconomic context — not by catchy metaphors. Nature once published a piece titled "Homo zappiens," only to conclude that the so-called tech-savvy generation may not differ significantly from those before them. Also, politicians and marketers often capitalize on generational branding. Millennials prefer this, Gen Z buys that and Gen Alpha wants something else. These sweeping claims obscure more serious divides — particularly within age groups — related to education, income and opportunity. Sociologist Jin-Wook Shin of Chung-Ang University argues that viewing inequality solely through an age-based lens distracts from the deepening class-based divisions within each generation. These dynamics reflect recurring patterns of human society. Good educators already know this. They refuse to reduce students to simplistic categories. Instead of assuming that every child is a digital native, we should resist untested assumptions. Not all teens thrive through gamified learning or digital platforms. Educators must engage students as individuals. What young people need most are not brainwave-monitoring headsets or VR goggles, but real human connection: authentic stories, lasting friendships, play and a sense of belonging. Ultimately, embracing the uniqueness of each student is essential. Imagine youth as a forest — almost uniform from a distance, but filled with quiet variation: moss growing in shade, early-turning maples and slender saplings reaching for the sky. Algorithms trained on averages may predict, "green today, perhaps green — or not — tomorrow," but human educators perceive the nuance. They notice the outliers, the overlooked, the quietly flourishing. That ability to truly see and nurture others lies at the heart of teaching. This attentive seeing — this honoring of complexity — is the true work of education. It ensures that no learner, regardless of digital fluency, is overlooked. In an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, let us recommit to fostering community, honoring diversity and upholding dignity. I believe overinvesting in AI while underinvesting in teachers, students and all members of the school community undermines the core of education. We must invest not just in tools, but in people.