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respects before his funeral.
Also in this podcast… 20 years back, the snow season was starting around October until March -April.
So there was a long season when we were receiving snow in these mountains, but now we have seen almost no snow until January.
Snowfall in the Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain range reaches a 23 -year low.
Thousands of people gathered in St. Peter's Square on Monday evening to mourn the death of Pope Francis at the age of 88.
Vatican figures led prayers in front of worshippers from across the world, many of whom were in Rome, to celebrate Easter.
We will pray for the late Pope, he was the first person from Latin America and the global south to lead the church, having been elected to the papacy in 2013 after the resignation of Pope Benedict.
Francis recently spent five weeks in hospital being treated for double pneumonia, but made a number of unexpected public appearances since being discharged a month ago, including attending Easter Sunday events in the Vatican.
Our religion editor Ali Mahbul sent this report from Rome.
Dearest brothers and sisters, said Cardinal Kevin Farrell, with deep sorrow I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis.
At 7 .35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome Francis returned to the house of the Father.
And with that, the end of what was a hugely consequential 12 -year term of the 266th Pope was announced to the world.
It could barely have come on a more auspicious day in the Catholic calendar, Easter Monday in the church's jubilee year.
At midday, the death knell tolled from St Peter's Basilica and rang through the square.
Part of the shock being felt here is that in spite of the pope's recent ill health, just 24 hours earlier he'd graced the very same square.
First to wish people here a happy Easter, but then to do what we come to expect of him, making his way through the crowds to bless them.
Despite advice last month to rest completely after his five -week stay in hospital with pneumonia.
The pope quickly got back to the business of meetings and doing what he appeared to love, speaking to and surrounding himself with people.
Last week, he met inmates at a Rome prison and just yesterday a brief encounter with the U .S. vice -President JD Vance.
I know you have not been feeling great, but it's good to see you in bed, Ralph.
Pray for you every day.
Bless you. And thank you for seeing me.
Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis had been focused on reaching out to those on the peripheries of the faith globally, to the marginalized, and even to those outside Catholicism.
The tributes pouring in from all parts of the world and from people of so many faith traditions and none is a testimony to his success in doing that.
He very definitely changed the direction of the Catholic Church, reorientating it away from the hierarchy and from Europe and towards the lives of people and their daily struggles wherever they happen to be.
Services to celebrate his life are already taking place around the world.
Well I heard more from Aleem who was watching events in St Peter's Square.
It's extraordinary the shock that people are feeling, I mean you look at what has happened over the last couple of months in mid -february, he was admitted to Things we hear were touch and go when it came to the pneumonia in both lungs that he had.
And yet people thought he was on the mend.
They had evidence of that.
They thought because over the last couple of weeks, even though he was told not to he was carrying out his work.
He was meeting people.
He was in the very same square yesterday.
and now from the Vatican notification of the cause of his death they say that it was a stroke followed by a heart attack that caused his death and the reason it's causing so much shock is because of this sense that he was on the mend there was going to be a new phase of his papacy but he would be able after time to continue some of his work.
So although as I say we knew that for various reasons, he had had health issues over recent years, it has still come as a shock to a lot of people who not only felt that it was sudden, but also felt that he was a man who had tried to do a lot of good things in terms of reorienting the Catholic Church, looking after the marginalized and speaking out for them.
I suppose if you're going to look at this point backwards, and at his legacy, he had very different style to the previous pontiffs particularly and I guess that is going to stand out what you know perhaps that's why people really are feeling it today.
Yes I mean some people want to characterize Pope Francis as being progressive or conservative for me it's more about the way they reached out I mean previous Pope's it was felt didn't mind a small group of faithful I suppose as long as it was a pure church they didn't want to change anything they wanted to remain very traditional.
This was a pope who really wanted to reach out.
I mean, his strength was being around people, trying to look at people's faith in their daily lives.
A big factor for him was trying to move away this church from being very heavily clerical, being led by clerics, and more into people's daily lives.
But he did that through reaching across denominations, other faiths, people who were not of faith, and you know he spoke out about issues others could connect with, when it came to the environment, when it came to being anti -war, these were things that spoke out to other people.
So yes a very definite change in direction in the Catholic Church, but one that had an impact beyond the Church itself.
If there was criticism of his 12 years do you think it's fair to say that critics would focus in on the sexual abuse and perhaps him not tackling that topic quite as forcefully as some would have liked?
I think a lot of the heaviest criticism was from people actually very close to him, to the Vatican.
It was those who thought he was too progressive, he was moving away to the traditions of the faith.
When it came to dealing with sexual abuse, I mean one thing he did do was recognise quite early on that he would be judged on how he dealt with that.
There were huge scandals in the Catholic Church And he did try to introduce some initiatives like, for example, mandatory reporting where he said anyone in any church who doesn't report sexual abuse when they know it's going on, risks being kicked out of their position.
And one thing he certainly did was meet a lot of victims and survivors, and say sorry.
Their entire trips focused primarily on saying sorry to victims of abuse.
so he did focus on that but there are those who say well he did make mistakes and although he said sorry for them, he should have done a better job of making sure these rules that you introduced were implemented everywhere the same.
Ali McBool. Juan Carlos Cruz -Cheliu was abused by a cleric in Chile when he was a boy and he says one of the few people in the church willing to listen to him was Pope Francis.
It had been a long time advocating for people who had been sexually abused in the church, and nobody had listened.
And finally he sent investigators to the United States, where I was living at the time.
He realized that he had made a mistake.
He was ill -informed.
So he invited me and two friends to come over and spend, I spent a week with him in Santa Marta.
And he and I talked long hours about the situation.
And ever since he started changing the attitude towards, you know, sexual abuse in the church and it made a 180 degree change, right?
It was incredible to feel listened to, to feel that, that my problem and the problem of so many others was finally taking an important place.
After that meeting, we had at the, he put out a statement saying that he had made a mistake and that he apologized and he gave my name and and then he wanted all the bishops in Chile to come to Rome.
And, of course, he had the report that had been done by Vatican officials, and then we were there.
And then they all came and he fired everybody.
He asked for their resignation.
So it was pretty incredible, it never happened.
Juan Carlos Cruz Chelyou speaking about his meetings with Pope Francis.
Still to come in this podcast… See this is what the media does.
They take anonymous sources from disgruntled, former employees, and then they try to slash and burn people, and ruin their reputations.
Not going to work with me.
The US Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, is accused of discussing classified information in a second group chat.
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Let's hear more now about how the pope is being remembered around the world starting in Latin America.
In Argentina a special mass was held in Buenos Aires where Francis was once archbishop.
It was led by the current archbishop, Jorge Garcia Cueva.
We are certain that Pope Francis now rests forever in the arms of God.
We are certain that beyond the pain we feel in our hearts today, Francis will never leave our hearts, nor the heart of the Argentine people because love is stronger.
There was also a special mass in Mexico City and our correspondent Will Grant spoke to me from there.
There are hundreds of faithful mourners essentially, making their way to the Basilica of Our Lady Guadalupe, the main cathedral in Mexico City, where they will be honouring Pope Francis, his life and obviously remembering and reflecting on him.
Of course, he had such an important impact in this region as the first Latin American pontiff, and I think so many people in Mexico, the faithful, and there are many nuns and local priests who are among the congregation here, wanting to pay their respects, but also just so many ordinary Mexicans.
The people whom Pope Francis really saw as the core of the church. There are a lot of, some of Latin Americans very poorest turning up here, some almost barefoot, but appearing in order to pay their respects.
And would you say that Argentina is a country that was proud to essentially have had a Pope from there because he never actually visited while he was Pope, so there was always that sort of political difficulty.
There was a political element to Pope Francis being Argentine.
As the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was accused of having too close a relationship to the military junta during the 1970s and 80s.
And of course, he didn't want to become embroiled in the modern day polarisation in Argentina.
And I think it is suggested by some of his biographers that that may be why he didn't return to his homeland after he became pope, but I think he was held in huge regard by his countrymen, one of the most important Argentines.
To have the first Latin American pope be an Argentine, not a Brazilian, not a Mexican, but an Argentine was a source of great pride for the people of his nation.
It's interesting because the president of Argentina, Javier Millet, has declared seven days of mourning and he's put out a message saying that he did acknowledge their political differences but also paying tribute.
Certainly. I mean, as a candidate, Javier Millet was very insulting to Pope Francis, even going so far as to sort of insult him directly to say he was promoting communism in the region and things of this nature.
That softened by the time he became the president of Argentina and the relationship had repaired somewhat.
But I think that is also part of this little insight as to the kind of tone of the politics that I think Pope Francis wanted to avoid by a visit to Buenos Aires and being dragged back into the sort of national political debate.
Will Grant in Mexico City.
The Christian community in the Middle East is mourning Pope Francis, especially Palestinian Christians who feel that he had often spoken up for them.
From Jerusalem, Sebastian Ussher reports.
Pictures of Pope Francis are being given pride of place in Bethlehem where Palestinian Christians still vividly remember his visit.
More than a decade ago.
One souvenir seller told the BBC, but the Pope always gave them hope.
In his final Easter Sunday message, Pope Francis once again addressed the war in Gaza and the suffering of both Palestinians and Israelis.
Palestinians also remembered the calls he would make to a priest in Gaza City to check on the wellbeing of Christian sheltering in the Catholic Church there.
The Pope's visits to a number of other countries across the region helped bolster the morale of dwindling Christian communities in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, as well as trying to advance interfaith dialogue.
Africa has around a fifth of all Catholics and has the fastest growing Catholic population in the world.
Outside the Holy Family Basilica in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, this woman told the BBC why she thought the Pope was so important for Africa.
Like Africa, for some people they look at us as a black continent.
I do not know whether it is because our colour is black.
But for him, he reached out to us and he brought changes.
He reached out like political leaders would be oppressive to their people.
He would speak out.
He has spoken out. Our Africa correspondent, Mayani Jones gave us more reaction.
For the millions of Catholics that follow the teachings of the Church, today is an incredibly sad day, an incredibly mournful day.
and many of them are more conservative and didn't always agree with Pope Francis, particularly on his stance around LGBTQ issues.
But they did respect the fact that he was always willing to highlight some of the challenges facing the continent.
Just yesterday, during his Easter service, he called for peace for some of the continents conflicts including in Sudan, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and that is the country that he visited himself in 2023 And this is a thing that many Africans admired about the Pope, that he didn't just talk about the conflicts on the continent, but he was also willing to travel here, to meet the Catholics that were here to try and draw attention to the world, to some of the issues that affect Africans, like wars, like migration.
So he will be greatly missed.
We've spoken to officials here who say that his legacy will live on forever, and earlier in the day, the African Union released a statement saying that he provided moral clarity at a time when world is increasingly fractured.
Finally, a tribute from the Philippines, Asia's biggest Roman Catholic nation.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa told the BBC that Francis was very much in touch with the modern world.
More than anyone, he understood what technology was doing to humanity.
I've been to the Vatican four times since 2021, and each time I meet him, I marvel at both the moral leadership and the political leadership because Pope Francis really held back the tide of conservative thought that threatened to bring us back to the Middle Ages.
The world will change.
Pope Francis lived in a sometimes horrendous world and he looked for our humanity.
The last hashtag that we had with him is hashtag be human be human and human is Empathetic it is all -inclusive And you look for the good the Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa in the next few days the formal process of laying the Pope to rest will take place before Cardinals arrive in the Vatican to decide on his successor but before his death Pope Francis had already chosen to change some of those traditions.
Our correspondent Mark Easton told me more about what will happen in the coming days and the legacy Pope Francis leaves behind.
He has completely designed the funeral ceremony and it's very different from the funeral service that we saw for Pope Benedict, which was the classic grand affair, a huge, big coffin, huge amounts of people, lots of bling.
This is going to be a really paired back thing.
Yes, they'll be the St. Peter's Square moment, and then our expectation is that the coffin will go in a sort of procession away from the Vatican.
Unlike most of his predecessors, he's elected not to be buried under the basilica in the Vatican, but actually in a another major basilica, at Santa Maria Maggiore in the Esquilino neighbourhood and that's an interesting area for him to have chosen.
It's a church in one of the less glamorous neighbourhoods of Rome, it's near the bus station and the railway station.
It's also where a lot of immigrants arrive and set down their routes, it's a very diverse area.
And in that way, it's very much in keeping with his philosophy, which was that the Catholic Church should be a home for everyone from whatever background.
and so I think his funeral will reflect that part of him.
You could put it this way, he wanted the church to be less Roman and more Catholic, less European and more reflecting the diversity of the the great Catholic Church. And that's something that he certainly has made sure to do when it comes to choosing a successor because he's had a large hand in changing the foundations of how that will be selected.
Yeah, 135 Cardinals will come together probably 15 -16 days from now to choose the next pope and 80 percent of them pretty much will have been chosen by Pope Francis.
He will have picked them out and said, those are the people.
And it's interesting, we've got 18 Cardinals from South America, 18 Cardinals from Africa.
That is going to really change potentially the way that the process happens.
You know, Conclaves, well, anyone who's seen the movie knows, you know, that these things can be a real surprise.
I think this could be a major surprise.
I mean, people are even saying, well, could we have a black pope?
It's not impossible.
There are some people who are suggesting that there are Cardinals from Africa who would be qualified for that kind of role.
Aside from the mechanics of the selection process that's clearly on the way, what do you think he'll be most remembered for?
What do you think his legacy will be?
One it will be on a church which reaches out to the marginalized, to the dispossessed.
When he was in Rome, he would invite the homeless to come in.
He wore shabby shoes.
People used to say, you know, some people who came and saw him would go, well, he's one of us.
What do you mean? Well, look at his shoes.
And I was talking to Cardinal Nichols this afternoon, the Archbishop of Westminster here in London, who was reflecting on the fact that he wanted the Catholic Church to be a universal place, open to everyone.
And I think to what extent the next Pope, the next chapter in the Catholic story will be more conservative or more liberal, the extent to which it will be more global and less European.
I do wonder whether that point of saying this is a church that needs to reach out to those who are on the margins of our societies, that that will actually be something that whoever comes into office after him will find very difficult to reverse.
Mark Easton. Now to some of the day's other news.
President Trump has denied that the US Defense Secretary discussed classified information in any group chat on the signal messaging app.
The New York Times has reported that Pete Hegseth created a group called Defense Team Huddle in which he shared information about airstrikes on Yemen.
Senior Democrats, including the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, have called for Mr Hegseth to be removed from his position.
Our North America editor, Sarah Smith, reports.
Pete Hegseth included his wife, his brother, and his personal lawyer in a mobile phone group chat in which he shared sensitive details of a planned military attack.
The operational details, including the flight schedules for the fighter jets targeting Houthi rebels in Yemen, were shared on the signal app.
this is the second time the defence secretary has found to have been sharing attack plans this way a journalist was mistakenly included on a separate signal group and also saw advanced military plans.
Asked about the latest controversy Mr. Hegseth turned his eye on the press but didn't actually deny the story.
See this is what the media does.
They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.
Not gonna work with me.
Mr Haig says the wife, a former Fox News producer, does not work for the Department of Defense but has already drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.
President Trump has said he has great confidence in his defense secretary saying he's doing a great job and dismissing the signal story as fake news from disgruntled employees at the Pentagon.
Sarah Smith, scientists say that snowfall along the Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain range has reached a 23 year low threatening nearly 2 billion people dependent on snow melt for water.
The report by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development calls for reduced global carbon emissions to address low snow levels in the long term.
Our South Asia regional editor Alfie Habershon reports.
The mountain range is known as the World's Water Tower or the Earth's Third Pole, with more snow than anywhere outside the Arctic and Antarctica.
But according to the research the peaks that stretch 800km from Afghanistan to Myanmar have less snow than before.
And the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development says it's melting nearly 25 % faster than normal.
Sher Muhamed led the study.
Twenty years back the snow season was starting around October, November, until March, April.
So there was a long season when we were receiving snow in these mountains but now we have seen almost no snow until January.
The mountain range runs through some of the most populated countries in the world, like China, India and Pakistan, it's the source of 10 of Asia's largest rivers.
And with this news, scientists say droughts could follow, in places already hard -hit by heatwaves.
It is significant for the people who are living in the mountains, for their households and also for their agriculture, but also for the people who are living downstream.
For irrigation, because there are reservoirs and these river basins and if there is less water available then there is less energy generation.
The report says early weather warning systems and stringent water use may help ease the problem But the global emissions must be reduced to save the rich water supply that nearly a quarter of the world relies on Alfie Habershund with that report And that's all from us for now There will be a new edition of the global news podcasts later on if you'd like to comment do send us an email our addresses global podcast at BBC You can also find us on ex at BBC World Service, just use the hashtag global news pod.
This edition was mixed by Caroline Driscoll, the producer was Richard Hamilton.
Our editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Chris Berrow and until next time goodbye.
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