On board the pimped-out buses driving Kenya's new language
Commuters travelling into central Nairobi from the eastern neighbourhood of Umoja pile on to a bus splashed liberally with Canadian red and white flags, medical-masked nuns with machine guns on the side and a gangster Pope Francis bringing up the rear. 'Am I extra or are you just basic?' the Pope's likeness asks passengers.
Inside, a flat-screen TV shows American hip-hop videos, music blaring through speakers as riders sit in plush leather seats.
Manyangas, as these wild, unregulated and ubiquitous buses are known, are cool in a way that London double-deckers never could be. The manyanga holds court over youth culture in Kenya, and conductors — or 'dondas' as they would say — are its kings.
These stylish young transit wardens with silver-capped teeth and
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Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Milei meets Pope Leo, confirms visit to Argentina
BUENOS AIRES, June 7 (Reuters) - Argentina's President Javier Milei held his first official audience with Pope Leo at the Vatican on Saturday where he confirmed that the pontiff will visit the South American country, according to the presidential spokesman. No further details of the planned visit were disclosed on Saturday. Milei had a tense relationship with Pope Francis, the late Argentine pope who never returned to his native country during his 12-year papacy, potentially signaling the start of a new diplomatic chapter. "The Pope confirmed to the President during our recent meeting that he will visit Argentina," Manuel Adorni, the presidential spokesperson wrote via social media. The papal visit could take place as soon as next year, according to Argentina's daily newspaper La Nación, as part of a tour that would include stops in Uruguay and Peru, where Leo, the first U.S. pope, resided for nearly 20 years. Milei, a libertarian and ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, was not present at the inauguration ceremony of the new head of the Catholic Church due to local legislative elections he was required to attend. Discussions between the two parties on Saturday were described as "cordial" and addressed issues of "common interest such as socioeconomic progress, the fight against poverty, and the commitment to social cohesion, in addition to addressing ongoing conflicts," the Vatican later said in a statement. Milei met Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday in Rome as part of his visit, where an agreement between Italian energy group Eni ( opens new tab and Argentina's state-owned energy firm YPF was signed.
The Independent
9 hours ago
- The Independent
Can an American pope apply US-style fundraising and standards to fix troubled Vatican finances?
As a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost was often on the lookout for used cars that he could buy cheap and fix up himself for use in parishes around his diocese. With cars that were really broken down, he'd watch YouTube videos to learn how to fix them. That kind of make-do-with-less, fix-it-yourself mentality could serve Pope Leo XIV well as he addresses one of the greatest challenges facing him as pope: The Holy See's chronic, 50 million to 60 million euro ($57-68 million) structural deficit, 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion) pension fund shortfall and declining donations that together pose something of an existential threat to the central government of the 1.4-billion strong Catholic Church. As a Chicago-born math major, canon lawyer and two-time superior of his global Augustinian religious order, the 69-year-old pope presumably can read a balance sheet and make sense of the Vatican's complicated finances, which have long been mired in scandal. Whether he can change the financial culture of the Holy See, consolidate reforms Pope Francis started and convince donors that their money is going to good use is another matter. Leo already has one thing going for him: his American-ness. U.S. donors have long been the economic life support system of the Holy See, financing everything from papal charity projects abroad to restorations of St. Peter's Basilica at home. Leo's election as the first American pope has sent a jolt of excitement through U.S. Catholics, some of whom had soured on donating to the Vatican after years of unrelenting stories of mismanagement, corruption and scandal, according to interviews with top Catholic fundraisers, philanthropists and church management experts. 'I think the election of an American is going to give greater confidence that any money given is going to be cared for by American principles, especially of stewardship and transparency,' said the Rev. Roger Landry, director of the Vatican's main missionary fundraising operation in the U.S., the Pontifical Mission Societies. 'So there will be great hope that American generosity is first going to be appreciated and then secondly is going to be well handled,' he said. 'That hasn't always been the circumstance, especially lately.' Reforms and unfinished business Pope Francis was elected in 2013 on a mandate to reform the Vatican's opaque finances and made progress during his 12-year pontificate, mostly on the regulatory front. With help from the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, Francis created an economy ministry and council made up of clergy and lay experts to supervise Vatican finances, and he wrestled the Italian-dominated bureaucracy into conforming to international accounting and budgetary standards. He authorized a landmark, if deeply problematic, corruption trial over a botched London property investment that convicted a once-powerful Italian cardinal. And he punished the Vatican's Secretariat of State that had allowed the London deal to go through by stripping it of its ability to manage its own assets. But Francis left unfinished business and his overall record, at least according to some in the donor community, is less than positive. Critics cite Pell's frustrated reform efforts and the firing of the Holy See's first-ever auditor general, who says he was ousted because he had uncovered too much financial wrongdoing. Despite imposing years of belt-tightening and hiring freezes, Francis left the Vatican in somewhat dire financial straits: The main stopgap bucket of money that funds budgetary shortfalls, known as the Peter's Pence, is nearly exhausted, officials say. The 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion) pension fund shortfall that Pell warned about a decade ago remains unaddressed, though Francis had planned reforms. And the structural deficit continues, with the Holy See logging an 83.5 million euro ($95 million) deficit in 2023, according to its latest financial report. As Francis' health worsened, there were signs that his efforts to reform the Vatican's medieval financial culture hadn't really stuck, either. The very same Secretariat of State that Francis had punished for losing tens of millions of euros in the scandalous London property deal somehow ended up heading up a new papal fundraising commission that was announced while Francis was in the hospital. According to its founding charter and statutes, the commission is led by the Secretariat of State's assessor, is composed entirely of Italian Vatican officials with no professional fundraising expertise and has no required external financial oversight. To some Vatican watchers, the commission smacks of the Italian-led Secretariat of State taking advantage of a sick pope to announce a new flow of unchecked donations into its coffers after its 600 million euro ($684 million) sovereign wealth fund was taken away and given to another office to manage as punishment for the London fiasco. 'There are no Americans on the commission. I think it would be good if there were representatives of Europe and Asia and Africa and the United States on the commission,' said Ward Fitzgerald, president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation. It is made up of wealthy American Catholics that since 1990 has provided over $250 million (219 million euros) in grants and scholarships to the pope's global charitable initiatives. Fitzgerald, who spent his career in real estate private equity, said American donors — especially the younger generation — expect transparency and accountability from recipients of their money, and know they can find non-Vatican Catholic charities that meet those expectations. 'We would expect transparency before we would start to solve the problem,' he said. That said, Fitzgerald said he hadn't seen any significant let-up in donor willingness to fund the Papal Foundation's project-specific donations during the Francis pontificate. Indeed, U.S. donations to the Vatican overall have remained more or less consistent even as other countries' offerings declined, with U.S. bishops and individual Catholics contributing more than any other country in the two main channels to donate to papal causes. A head for numbers and background fundraising Francis moved Prevost to take over the diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014. Residents and fellow priests say he consistently rallied funds, food and other life-saving goods for the neediest — experience that suggests he knows well how to raise money when times are tight and how to spend wisely. He bolstered the local Caritas charity in Chiclayo, with parishes creating food banks that worked with local businesses to distribute donated food, said the Rev. Fidel Purisaca Vigil, a diocesan spokesperson. In 2019, Prevost inaugurated a shelter on the outskirts of Chiclayo, Villa San Vicente de Paul, to house desperate Venezuelan migrants who had fled their country's economic crisis. The migrants remember him still, not only for helping give them and their children shelter, but for bringing live chickens obtained from a donor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prevost launched a campaign to raise funds to build two oxygen plants to provide hard-hit residents with life-saving oxygen. In 2023, when massive rains flooded the region, he personally brought food to the flood-struck zone. Within hours of his May 8 election, videos went viral on social media of Prevost, wearing rubber boots and standing in a flooded street, pitching a solidarity campaign, 'Peru Give a Hand,' to raise money for flood victims. The Rev. Jorge Millán, who lived with Prevost and eight other priests for nearly a decade in Chiclayo, said he had a 'mathematical' mentality and knew how to get the job done. Prevost would always be on the lookout for used cars to buy for use around the diocese, Millán said, noting that the bishop often had to drive long distances to reach all of his flock or get to Lima, the capital. Prevost liked to fix them up himself, and if he didn't know what to do, 'he'd look up solutions on YouTube and very often he'd find them,' Millán told The Associated Press. Before going to Peru, Prevost served two terms as prior general, or superior, of the global Augustinian order. While the order's local provinces are financially independent, Prevost was responsible for reviewing their balance sheets and oversaw the budgeting and investment strategy of the order's headquarters in Rome, said the Rev. Franz Klein, the order's Rome-based economist who worked with Prevost. The Augustinian campus sits on prime real estate just outside St. Peter's Square and supplements revenue by renting out its picturesque terrace to media organizations (including the AP) for major Vatican events, including the conclave that elected Leo pope. But even Prevost saw the need for better fundraising, especially to help out poorer provinces. Toward the end of his 12-year term and with his support, a committee proposed creation of a foundation, Augustinians in the World. At the end of 2023, it had 994,000 euros ($1.13 million) in assets and was helping fund self-sustaining projects across Africa, including a center to rehabilitate former child soldiers in Congo. 'He has a very good interest and also a very good feeling for numbers,' Klein said. 'I have no worry about the finances of the Vatican in these years because he is very, very clever.' ___ Franklin Briceño contributed from Lima, Peru. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
San Francisco's absurd plan to charge homeowners for having a DRIVEWAY
San Francisco was forced into admitting an embarrassing U-turn after plans emerged to charge homeowners and business for having a driveway. City officials were seriously considering the $100 per year charge to help pay for mini bus and rail services, according to records reviewed by the San Francisco Chronicle. The city ultimately scrapped the concept, which is strikingly similar to New York City's controversial congestion pricing brought in to fund subway improvements. Both ideas penalize people who drive cars under the assumption that residents will one day get around using only public transport. The driveway fee in San Francisco was first proposed in April by the Muni Funding Working Group, a task force formed to come up with new revenue sources to cover the Municipal Transportation Agency's $322 million budget deficit. Even if San Francisco officials are as determined as New York officials have been to get congestion pricing through, it will likely take them years to weave through California 's complicated bureaucracy. Congestion pricing in New York took years to come to fruition, with former Mayor Michael Bloomberg being the first to propose something resembling the current plan in 2007. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo and former Mayor Bill De Blasio first striking a deal on it in 2019. It only went into effect in January of this year before President Donald Trump stepped in to stop the tax, which is currently being litigated in court. A spokesperson for the Municipal Transportation Agency told the Chronicle that charging people for their driveways isn't an idea that's 'on the table', while other staff at the agency said such a policy would run into significant legal and administrative barriers. The fee would have to be approved by the agency's board of directors. Then, if the fee were considered a new tax, it would have to be put in front of voters. Still, the working group put together a report detailing how it would have worked had it been implemented. Anyone who owned a property that has a 'curb cut' in the public sidewalk in front of their driveway would have had to pay the fee. The city 'likely has more private driveway curb cuts than any other city of its size and density, since most east coast cities of similar density make more use of back alleys for trash and car access,' representatives from the working group wrote in the report. 'These curb cuts are essentially permanent privatization of public space,' the report continued. 'Charging an annual fee to the owners of curb cuts would put a fair price on this privatization of public space, encourage owners whose curb cuts no longer lead to active driveways to return those curb cuts to the public, and generate significant revenue for the agency.' An economic analysis from the city estimated that San Francisco has 196,000 curb cuts that would have generated $19.6 million annually at $100 apiece. Officials noted that they'd have to subtract $3 million from that total for administrative and staffing costs related to collecting the fees from homeowners. Willie Brown, the veteran Democrat who served as San Francisco's mayor from 1996 to 2004, blasted the plan as 'nonsense.' 'What kind of nonsense is this?' the 91-year-old said. 'If any member of the working group wants to donate $100 a year to fund Muni, they can do that. They shouldn't have the rest of us donate by being penalized for having a driveway.' Professor Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis, had a slightly different take on the driveway fee. Sperling told the Chronicle that he thought of it more as a property tax hike, which cities frequently do to fund things like schools and libraries. Driveway fees are 'a more equitable way to use public space,' according to Luke Bornheimer, executive director of Streets Forward, a nonprofit that promotes cycling, walking and transit. Bornheimer told the Chronicle that allowing homeowners and businesses to have a sloped curb for free is subsidizing car owners at the expense of people who get around by other means. Although Sperling views the driveway fee in a more innocuous light than others, he acknowledged that residents likely wouldn't be in favor of paying another tax.
