Story by Joshua McElwee

 • 4d • (MSN.com)

Pope Leo XIV leads a Holy Mass with priestly ordinations in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, April 26, 2026. REUTERS/Remo Casilli/File Photo© Thomson Reuters

By Joshua McElwee

VATICAN CITY, April 27 (Reuters) – Pope Leo’s four-nation Africa tour featured firm denunciations by the pontiff of despotism and war and also unprecedented attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump that grabbed headlines.

But a smaller moment, in which the pope said the Catholic Church should prioritise questions of inequality and justice over those of sexual ethics, may prove to be of longer-lasting importance for the Church’s 1.4 billion members, said experts.

“The unity or division of the Church should not revolve around sexual matters,” Leo, the first U.S. pope, said in a press conference on his flight home on Thursday. 

“I believe there are much greater and more important issues such as justice, equality… that would all take priority before that particular issue,” he said.

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of Dignity USA, a group that supports LGBTQ Catholics, called the pope’s remarks “a very significant and overdue reorientation of priorities”.

Priests and bishops in the global Church have long emphasised as high priorities its teachings on sexual issues, including its bans on abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage. 

On his first trip to Africa in 2009, the late Pope Benedict XVI sparked an international outcry when he said the Church could not relax its ban on Catholics using condoms, even to help fight the transmission of HIV/AIDS.

Related video: The pope who tried to change the church (Tom Nicholas)

Nos acompañan en la noticia de que, lamentablemente, el Papa

Benedict said allowing condoms would only “increase the problem” ethically.

POPE’S APPROACH SEEN AS NEW FOR GLOBAL CHURCH

Leo made his comments on Thursday in response to a question about the Church offering blessings for same-sex couples.    

He said he supported a landmark 2023 decision by the late Pope Francis allowing pastors to give blessings to same-sex couples informally, outside of a ritual service, and on a case-by-case basis. 

But Leo said he wanted to prioritise other ethical questions and did not want the blessings to be formalised further. 

“To go beyond that today, ⁠I think that the topic can cause more disunity than unity,” ​said the 70-year-old pontiff.

Rev. James Keenan, an academic at Boston College, called Leo’s approach new for the global Church.

The pope is “stating that the Vatican has a hierarchy of concerns and the perception that matters of sexuality have singular priority of place is not the case,” said Keenan, a Jesuit priest who founded a global network of Catholic academics focused on ethical issues.

“This is clearly a prudential judgment by the pontiff… that issues of blessing gay marriage ought not eclipse more immediate challenges of dictatorships and war,” said Keenan.

The Catholic ​Church teaches that sexual relationships outside heterosexual marriage are sinful. It says people with same-sex attractions ​should try to be chaste.

LEO’S ‘WHO AM I TO JUDGE’ MOMENT

Francis, who led the Church for 12 years until his death last April, largely also sought to emphasise the Church’s teachings on justice issues.

Asked in 2013 about rumours surrounding a priest working at the Vatican being gay, Francis famously responded: “If a person is gay and is seeking the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge them?”

Those remarks, signalling unprecedented openness from a pope toward LGBTQ Catholics, became a seminal moment in Francis’ tenure, quoted widely and printed on merchandise and T-shirts.

“This seems like Leo’s ‘Who am I to judge?’ moment,” said David Gibson, a Vatican expert and academic at Fordham University, about Leo’s Thursday remarks. 

“(Leo) is about peace and justice and sees those moral teachings as equally important as sexual ethics,” said Gibson.

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, another group that supports LGBTQ Catholics, praised Leo’s response.

“He listed other matters, more social matters — justice, equality, freedom — as being of greater moral concern,” said DeBernardo. “For years, Catholic advocates for LGBTQ+ people have been saying the same thing.”

(Reporting by Joshua McElwee Editing by Gareth Jones)

The star-studded event celebrated achievements by the world’s top scientists in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics, and Mathematics.

By Ashley Lan

April 30, 2026 (hollywoodreporter.com)

On Saturday, April 18, the world’s leading scientists and mathematicians joined Hollywood’s top stars in Los Angeles for the 12th annual Breakthrough Prize awards—often referred to as the “Oscars of Science”—to celebrate landmark scientific advancements and the people who make them possible.

Founded in 2012 by tech giants Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan, Julia & Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki, the Breakthrough Prize was created to honor the achievements of the world’s top scientists, awarding approximately $15 million annually in prizes. In 2026, six Breakthrough Prizes of $3 million each were presented in Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics, and Mathematics—bringing the cumulative amount awarded over its 15-year history to $345 million.

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The annual ceremony was a star-studded affair that put science in the spotlight. Actor and Emmy Award winner James Corden returned for the fifth time to host the evening, with legends like Gigi Hadid, Lily Collins, Anne Hathaway, and Tom Hanks (who shared a video tribute to the late astronaut Jim Lovell, whom he portrayed in Apollo 13) presenting awards and offering remarks throughout. Other newer names that have been generating buzz all year were also in attendance, like Olympic freestyle skier and model Eileen Gu, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, and Waymo CEO Tekedra Mawakana.

Academy Award-winning actors Octavia Spencer and Sean Penn kicked things off by awarding the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences to Stuart H. Orkin and Swee Lay Thein for research that transformed sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia from incurable conditions to treatable ones through gene editing therapy. As she accepted the award, Thein poignantly shared, “As a kid playing on old railway tracks in Malaysia, I never dreamed that I would be here today.”

In Life Sciences, Katherine A. High and husband-and-wife team Jean Bennett and Albert Maguire were recognized for developing the first FDA-approved gene replacement therapy that has restored sight to patients born with Leber congenital amaurosis—a rare inherited retinal disease that typically leads to total blindness in early adulthood. And further prizes were presented to Rosa Rademakers and Bryan Traynor for independently discovering the most common genetic cause of both ALS and frontotemporal dementia—a repeat expansion mutation in the C9orf72 gene.

During the presentation, scientist-physician Yentli Soto Albrecht—who carries the very gene mutation Rademakers and Traynor identified—took the stage in a moving speech and spoke of her father who passed away from ALS: “My dad and I share a genetic fate, but I’m changing my future,” she said. “The scientists honored here tonight discovered our genetic mutation. They mapped the battlefield; now we can wage the war.”

Notably, Olympic gold medalist Eileen Gu and five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen also honored Anthony Hyman and Clifford Brangwynne with the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for their groundbreaking discovery of a new fundamental mechanism of cellular organization. The prize was actually awarded in 2023, but the duo was unable to appear at the ceremony due to the COVID-19 pandemic and accepted it this year.

Prizes in Fundamental Physics were awarded to the Muon g–2 Collaborations at CERN, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermilab, recognizing decades of work by scientists around the world who pushed experimental precision to extraordinary levels in measuring the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon—a key test for undiscovered particles and forces. During the presentation, a ballerina suddenly appeared on stage, spinning and circling, offering a creative manifestation of muon’s spinning magnetic moment.

Breakthrough Prize co-founder Yuri Milner and NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang announced the Vera Rubin New Frontiers Prize, a brand-new physics prize that recognizes women physicists who have recently completed their doctorates and are already making important scientific contributions. Named after astronomer Vera Rubin, who discovered core evidence for dark matter, this year’s inaugural prize was awarded to Carolina Figuerido, who has already revealed hidden relations among quantum field theories.

As the final award in Fundamental Physics, award-winning actresses Michelle Williams and Lily Collins shared the story of Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics winner David J. Gross, underscoring his intellectual family life, discovery of Einstein’s book on physics, and subsequent six decades of significant contributions. While receiving his prize, Gross spoke about how, through the journey of theoretical physics, “Scientific discovery, once revealed, belongs to humanity forever—and challenges us to use it wisely.”

The sole Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics went to Frank Merle for his transformative work on nonlinear evolution equations—the mathematical descriptions of how waves, fluids, and other dynamic systems change over time. Merle’s insights overturned fundamental assumptions in the field, including the surprising discovery that equations long thought to be stable can, in fact, blow up in finite time.

Throughout the night, the ceremony also featured impressive music performances by Grammy winner Lionel Richie, who performed his global hit “We Are the World” alongside a choir of children in attendance, and soprano Renée Fleming, who sang “Hallelujah” accompanied by composer and pianist Billy Childs as a tribute to the great scientists who passed over the last year. Pop icons David Guetta and Ava Max then closed the show with a rendition of “Forever Young” as all the Breakthrough Prize laureates took the stage for one final standing ovation, drawing the scintillating evening to an exuberant close.

(Contributed by Calvin Harris, H.W., M.)

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.” Seneca (c. 4BC – 65AD) Roman Stoic Philosopher

AN OPPORTUNITY FOR DAILY REFLECTION BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SCHOOL OF PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY

Rilke in 1900

“Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn’t exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke, known as Rainer Maria Rilke, was an Austrian poet. Acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, he is widely recognized as a significant writer in the German language. Wikipedia

Born December 4, 1875, Prague, Czechia

Died December 29, 1926 (age 51 years), Montreux, Switzerland

Published: April 30, 2026 (TheOnion.com)

HONOLULU—Cackling wildly as He willed the barnyard fowl into existence, a drunk God Almighty, Supreme Leader of the Universe, reportedly made a few dozen roosters materialize Thursday over a random point in the Pacific Ocean. “Yo, Gabriel, check this shit out!” the wasted Creator of All Things said while jostling the archangel on the shoulder and pointing at the birds struggling in the waves below. “Look at all these fucking birds I got. Can’t fly to shore, so what you gonna do? Come on, look at this shit. Look, they’re all splashing and squawking like motherfuckers. Should I put ’em in a volcano or something? Maybe I’ll materialize a couple orcas for good measure. Or wait—what about a whirlpool? Damn, I don’t think I’ve had this much fun since the flood!” At press time, reports confirmed God was throwing down an extra large rooster to make as big of a splash as possible.

• Casey Chang | Staff
• Apr 30, 2026 (DailyCal.org)

Campus student groups organized a candlelight vigil with more than 100 attendees on Sproul Plaza on Tuesday evening to honor those killed during the Feb. 28 missile strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, Iran.

U.S. military investigators found the United States were likely responsible for the attack that killed about 168 people, including 110 students.

“The difficulty in having a candlelight vigil is that you hope that it will stop,” said ethnic studies lecturer Hatem Bazian. “But unfortunately, as we’re seeing the development around the world, it doesn’t look like there is any stopping anytime soon.”

Vigil organizers displayed poster boards featuring poetry and photos of the school and those killed in the strike. A projector played a video of Josephine Guilbeau, a former U.S. Army counterterrorism officer, in which she alleged the U.S. strike constituted a war crime. Following Guilbeau’s speech, the projector also played home videos of the children who were killed.

A member of UC Berkeley’s Ahlul Bayt Student Association, who requested anonymity because of fear of retribution, said it took about two weeks to organize the event.

“I’m a graduating senior right now, and seeing these backpacks with red blood on them or these innocent faces, I can’t help but think that I’m so privileged to be able to experience my education at a university,” the member said.

Maryam Farahmand-Asil, UC Berkeley alumna and assistant professor at Northeastern University, first approached Ahlul Bayt Student Association and other student groups to organize the event.

Farahmand-Asil had been planning the event for more than a month with the intention to raise campus awareness of the missile strike.

“About 168 students were killed on a strike in just one day, during school time — they didn’t know that the war happened,” Farahand-Asil said. “We want to raise awareness to all the students … So when they see what’s happened, they just search and they see how they can help.”

Another student group that helped organize the event was the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

A member of SJP, who requested anonymity because of fear of retribution, highlighted Sproul as a “great and accessible space” to hold the vigil.

Fateme D. Montazeri, a scholar at campus’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, said she connected with the event on a personal level.

“I have long followed violence in the Middle East, but this one reached me differently,” Montazeri said. “Was it because the children of Minab spoke my mother tongue? … For the first time, I could not maintain the distance between what I knew and what I felt.”

Translation is a 5-step process of “straight thinking in the abstract” comparing and contrasting what seems to be truth with what you can syllogistically, axiomatically and mathematically (using word equations) prove is the truth. It is not an effort to change, alter or heal anything other than our consciousness.

The claims in a Translation should be outrageous and mind-blowing, but they are always (or should always be) based on self-evident syllogistic reasoning. Here is one Translation from this week. 

1)    Truth is that which is so.  That which is not truth is not so. Therefore Truth is all that is.  Truth being all is therefore total, therefore whole, therefore complete, therefore perfect.  I think, therefore I am. Since I am and since Truth is all that is, I cannot be outside of all that is, therefore I, being, am Truth.  Since I being am Truth therefore I, being, have all the attributes of Truth.  Therefore I, being, am total, whole, complete, perfect.  Since I am Truth and since I am mind (self-evident), therefore truth is Mind. (Two things being equal to a third thing are equal to each other.)  

2)    Inflammation is programmed to detect foreigners or dangers or injuries to the body, sometimes foreigners or dangers or injuries long past.  

Word-tracking:
inflammation:  white blood cells sort of like policemen or guards
foreign:  strange, outside, outsider
danger:  power, jurisdiction, master or a lord (etymology)
jurisdiction:  “I say what’s right.”
lord:  person with power
injury:  wrong, injustice, insult (to jump on)
past:  already occurred, beyond in time, space, or range
body:  the totality of something as in the body of work

3)    Truth being all has no limit, therefore there is nothing beyond Truth in time, space, or range.  Therefore Truth has no past tense OR Truth is the limitless present.  Truth being all that is, there can be no power other than all that is, therefore Truth is the only Lord. Truth being the only Lord is therefore the only power, jurisdiction, or master.  Truth being all that is, there is nothing foreign in Truth, therefore Truth is all domestic OR Truth is at home everywhere.  Since Truth is the only power, therefore Truth is the only jurisdiction.  Therefore Truth is the only authority to say what’s right.  Since Truth is true, therefore right, therefore there is no injustice, injury or wrong in Truth. Therefore Truth is justice and that which is not justice is not so.  Therefore Justice is all that is. Since justice is all that is, there is no need to guard against injustice or injury, therefore there is no inflammation in truth.  Truth being all that is and therefore one, therefore the only body is the infinite body of Truth.

4)    Truth has no past tense OR Truth is the limitless present.
        Truth is the only Lord. 
        Truth is the only power, jurisdiction, or master. 
        Truth is all domestic OR Truth is at home everywhere.
        Truth is the only jurisdiction. 
        Truth is the only authority to say what’s right. 
        Truth is justice.
        Justice is all that is. 
        There is no inflammation in truth.
        The only body is the infinite body of Truth.

5)    The infinite body of Truth is Lord, the only power, jurisdiction or master, at home everywhere.

For information about Translation or other Prosperos classes go to: https://www.theprosperos.org/teaching.

Weekly Invitational Translation Group invites your participation.  If you would like to submit a Translation on any subject, feel free to send your weekly Translation to  zonta1111@aol.com and we will anonymously post it on the Bathtub Bulletin on Friday.

Or, if you have taken Translation class, join us each Saturday for Translation Saturday Meeting at 11 a.m. Pacific time for current, up-to-the-minute Translations on the issues of the day.  Email zonta1111@aol.com for the Zoom link.

May 2:  11:00 AM – 12:00 PM PST

Mike Zonta, H.W., M.

In a crisis — any crisis — The Prosperos offers Translation.  Translation Saturday Meetings is a weekly series of Translation presentations by veteran Translators, live and up to date on the issues of the day.

It is not a Translation workshop,  It is not a Translation class.  It is not a group Translation in the usual sense, though group participation is encouraged.

It is, however, restricted to those who have taken Translation class. So if you have never taken Translation class, check the calendar tab on The Prosperos website (TheProsperos.org) or get in touch with us and we will schedule a class.

Last week our sense testimony was:  Arguments and misunderstandings and war.  How are these possible? And our conclusion was:   The inclusion of all viewpoints is Truth. 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – See you there!!! – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Here’s the link:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81749347119

For more info and link to join please email Mike Zonta at:

zonta1111@aol.com

President Lyndon Johnson and Senator J. William Fulbright inspect Richard Anuszkiewicz’s 1963 painting Squaring the Circle at the 1965 White House Arts Festival. Photo: Yoichi Okamoto

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

square the circle

PRONUNCIATION:

(skwair thuh SUHR-kuhl) 

MEANING:

idiom: To accomplish what appears to be impossible, especially in satisfying conflicting requirements.

ETYMOLOGY:

From the classical geometric problem of constructing, using only a compass and straightedge, a square equal in area to a given circle. Earliest documented use: 1624.

NOTES:

In classical geometry, to square the circle is to construct a square with the same area as a given circle, using only a compass and straightedge. Mathematicians chased this problem for centuries. In 1882, it was proved impossible to do exactly in a finite number of steps. That has not stopped people, in mathematics or elsewhere, from trying. Anyone who still tries to solve this problem is being completely irrational (just like π).

USAGE:

“I understand, Terence, what a dilemma you had: there seemed no way to square the circle.”
S.R. White; White Ash Ridge; Headline; 2024.

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove Apr 29, 2026 James Tunney, LLM, is an Irish Barrister who has lectured on legal matters throughout the world. He is a poet, a visual artist, and author of The Mystery of the Trapped Light: Mystical Thoughts in the Dark Age of Scientism plus The Mystical Accord: Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution. His website is http://www.jamestunney.com. In this reboot from 2020, James acknowledges that he is approaching this topic as a mystic and a scholar, but not as a practitioner of ceremonial magic. He reviews various historical cases of conjuring, particularly that of John Dee, the court astrologer to Elizabeth I. He points out that laws against conjuring were established by Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII. He describes various dangers associated with conjuring, including possession. Tunney contrasts the magical practice of conjuring with the mystical journey that necessitates letting go of egotistical attachments. (Recorded on October 10, 2020)