Latest news with #Grech
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Cardinal says he's relieved not to have been elected Pope
A Catholic cardinal who was considered a leading candidate to be elected Pope has expressed relief that he was not chosen, saying anyone who actively wants the job is either 'a martyr or crazy'. Mario Grech, from Malta, was one of a dozen or so cardinals that Vatican experts saw as a 'papabile' – literally 'Pope-able' cardinal – following the death of Pope Francis. But he insisted he had no desire for the job and was deeply relieved to be able to leave Rome 'a free man' after the conclave, the secret election inside the Sistine Chapel that resulted in the nomination of Robert Prevost as Leo XIV, the first Pope from North America. 'Someone told me before the conclave: in order to want it [the papacy], you must either be a martyr – and I don't feel I'm one – or crazy,' Cardinal Grech said. He said he had urged his brother cardinals not to push him forward as a candidate, telling The Times of Malta: 'Several people would tell me they're praying for me, and I would say, 'Continue praying, but according to my intention, not yours'.' Asked whether he was relieved not to have been elected by the 133 cardinals, he said: 'Yes, definitely. On Thursday evening, I returned home a free man. 'I only realised after the conclave why the new Pope takes a new name – because his old life is not his any more. He is not his own man any more. He cannot even go out for a coffee or for a short walk. And those are just the little things.' Cardinal Grech, 68, comes from the island of Gozo to the north of the main island of Malta. He was appointed a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2020. He said it was wrong to think that every cardinal had a desire to become Pope, adding that the same reluctance to assume high office permeated throughout the Catholic hierarchy. Around a quarter of priests who are chosen by the Pope to become bishops are turning down the promotion, and Cardinal Grech said: 'They don't want it, because the burdens of authority in the Church are truly immense.' He said that as a member of the Synod of bishops, he saw the problem first hand, adding: 'When a bishopric becomes vacant anywhere around the world, we receive dossiers from the local nuncio detailing three nominees. We review these files, rank the candidates by preference, and submit them to the Pope for his final selection. 'Yet, it's increasingly common for the chosen candidate to decline – roughly 25 per cent refuse the appointment. One in every four priests chosen by the Pope to be bishops are refusing.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Herald Malaysia
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Herald Malaysia
Cardinal Grech urges religious men to be ‘engines of hope' for synodal Church
Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, urges religious men to draw inspiration from the Church's desire for synodality, as he meets with members of the Union of Superiors General. May 24, 2025 Cardinal Mario Grech speaks to the USG Assembly in Sacrofano on May 23, 2025 By Devin Watkins'Pope Leo XIV encourages us to advance on the path of synodality, making fruitful the many seeds planted in the soil of the Church during the 2021–2024 Synodal process.' Cardinal Mario Grech, Secretary General of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, offered that invitation to members of the Union of Superiors General (USG) on Friday during their Assembly. The heads of male religious orders held their 103rd General Assembly in Sacrofano, near Rome, on May 21-23. In his address, Cardinal Grech reflected on the theme 'Consecrated Life: Engine of Hope in a Synodal Church,' recalling Pope Francis' call for the Church to listen well. Pope Leo XIV, he noted, has already spoken frequently of synodality, most notably in his address on the evening of his election to the papacy: 'We want to be a synodal Church, a Church that moves forward.' Cardinal Grech said the Church has concluded the 'celebratory' phase of the Synod on Synodality with its Final Document, noting that the most important phase is its 'reception' by the people of God. 'The protagonist of reception is the Holy Spirit, who acts in the depths of the people of God and gradually leads them along the path of reform, of which He Himself is the divine engine,' he said. The Cardinal went on to highlight the role of consecrated life in the Church as a form of prophecy, one which assists in the inculturation of the Gospel in local cultures and societies. He pointed out that the Synod on Synodality's first phase involved in-depth consultation with various realities of local Churches, in the hope of giving Catholics a chance to walk together. Consecrated life, he added, have long employed the principle of synodal listening and communal discernment for their shared life and mission. Cardinal Grech said religious orders also carry out a 'prophetic exercise of authority,' with many religious expressing their appreciation at the Synod for a transparent and accountable form of leadership. However, he noted, religious authority has sometimes degraded into abuse of conscience and personal freedom, resulting in deplorable cases of sexual abuse. Confronting patterns of abuse require both sanctions and, more importantly, a change of 'mentality, style, and ecclesial culture,' said the Cardinal. Cardinal Grech then highlighted Pope Leo XIV's focus on the Church's missionary zeal. Mission, he said, stands as the external expression of the synodal drive to involve everyone at all stages through 'participation and communion.' 'In this new stage of the Church's journey,' concluded Cardinal Grech, 'you consecrated men and women, belonging to ancient and modern Institutes, must feel entrusted with the task of being the vanguard of the Church's missionary renewal.'--Vatican News
Business Mayor
18-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Trump wants coal to power AI data centers. The tech industry may need to make peace with that for now
President Donald Trump wants to revive the struggling coal industry in the U.S. by deploying plants to power the data centers that the Big Tech companies are building to train artificial intelligence. Trump issued an executive order in April that directed his Cabinet to find areas of the U.S. where coal-powered infrastructure is available to support AI data centers and determine whether the infrastructure can be expanded to meet the growing electricity demand from the nation's tech sector. Trump has repeatedly promoted coal as power source for data centers. The president told the World Economic Forum in January that he would approve power plants for AI through emergency declaration, calling on the tech companies to use coal as a backup power source. 'They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal,' the president said. Trump's push to deploy coal runs afoul of the tech companies' environmental goals. In the short-term, the industry's power needs may inadvertently be extending the life of existing coal plants. Coal produces more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of power than any other energy source in the U.S. with the exception of oil, according to the Energy Information Administration. The tech industry has invested billions of dollars to expand renewable energy and is increasingly turning to nuclear power as a way to meet its growing electricity demand while trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that fuel climate change. For coal miners, Trump's push is a potential lifeline. The industry has been in decline as coal plants are being retired in the U.S. About 16% of U.S. electricity generation came from burning coal in 2023, down from 51% in 2001, according to EIA data. Peabody Energy CEO James Grech, who attended Trump's executive order ceremony at the White House, said 'coal plants can shoulder a heavier load of meeting U.S. generation demands, including multiple years of data center growth.' Peabody is one of the largest coal producers in the U.S. Grech said coal plants should ramp up how much power they dispatch. The nation's coal fleet is dispatching about 42% of its maximum capacity right now, compared to a historical average of 72%, the CEO told analysts on the company's May 6 earnings call. 'We believe that all coal-powered generators need to defer U.S. coal plant retirements as the situation on the ground has clearly changed,' Grech said. 'We believe generators should un-retire coal plants that have recently been mothballed.' Tech sector reaction There is a growing acknowledgment within the tech industry that fossil fuel generation will be needed to help meet the electricity demand from AI. But the focus is on natural gas, which emits less half the CO2 of coal per kilowatt hour of power, according the the EIA. 'To have the energy we need for the grid, it's going to take an all of the above approach for a period of time,' Kevin Miller, Amazon's vice president of global data centers, said during a panel discussion at conference of tech and oil and gas executives in Oklahoma City last month. 'We're not surprised by the fact that we're going to need to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term,' Miller said. Thermal generation is a code word for gas, said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure and power resources for data centers. Sahlstrom previously led Amazon's energy, water and sustainability teams. Executives at Amazon , Nvidia and Anthropic would not commit to using coal, mostly dodging the question when asked during the panel at the Oklahoma City conference. 'It's never a simple answer,' Amazon's Miller said. 'It is a combination of where's the energy available, what are other alternatives.' Nvidia is able to be agnostic about what type of power is used because of the position the chipmaker occupies on the AI value chain, said Josh Parker, the company's senior director of corporate sustainability. 'Thankfully, we leave most of those decisions up to our customers.' Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said there are a broader set of options available than just coal. 'We would certainly consider it but I don't know if I'd say it's at the top of our list.' Sahlstrom said Trump's executive order seems like a 'dog whistle' to coal mining constituents. There is a big difference between looking at existing infrastructure and 'actually building new power plants that are cost competitive and are going to be existing 30 to 40 years from now,' the Tract executive said. Coal is being displaced by renewables, natural gas and existing nuclear as coal plants face increasingly difficult economics, Sahlstrom said. 'Coal has kind of found itself without a job,' he said. 'I do not see the hyperscale community going out and signing long term commitments for new coal plants,' the former Amazon executive said. (The tech companies ramping up AI are frequently referred to as 'hyperscalers.') 'I would be shocked if I saw something like that happen,' Sahlstrom said. Coal retirements strain grid But coal plant retirements are creating a real challenge for the grid as electricity demand is increasing due to data centers, re-industrialization and the broader electrification of the economy. The largest grid in the nation, the PJM Interconnection, has forecast electricity demand could surge 40% by 2039. PJM warned in 2023 that 40 gigawatts of existing power generation, mostly coal, is at risk of retirement by 2030, which represents about 21% of PJM's installed capacity. Data centers will temporarily prolong coal demand as utilities scramble to maintain grid reliability, delaying their decarbonization goals, according to a Moody's report from last October. Utilities have already postponed the retirement of coal plants totaling about 39 gigawatts of power, according to data from the National Mining Association. 'If we want to grow America's electricity production meaningfully over the next five or ten years, we [have] got to stop closing coal plants,' Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC's 'Money Movers' last month. But natural gas and renewables are the future, Sahlstrom said. Some 60% of the power sector's emissions reductions over the past 20 years are due to gas displacing coal, with the remainder coming from renewables, Sahlstrom said. 'That's a pretty powerful combination, and it's hard for me to see people going backwards by putting more coal into the mix, particularly if you're a hyperscale customer who has net-zero carbon goals,' he said.
CNBC
17-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Trump wants coal to power AI data centers. The tech industry may need to make peace with that for now
President Donald Trump wants to revive the struggling coal industry in the U.S. by deploying plants to power the data centers that the Big Tech companies are building to train artificial intelligence. Trump issued an executive order in April that directed his Cabinet to find areas of the U.S. where coal-powered infrastructure is available to support AI data centers and determine whether the infrastructure can be expanded to meet the growing electricity demand from the nation's tech sector. Trump has repeatedly promoted coal as power source for data centers. The president told the World Economic Forum in January that he would approve power plants for AI through emergency declaration, calling on the tech companies to use coal as a backup power source. "They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal," the president said. Trump's push to deploy coal runs afoul of the tech companies' environmental goals. In the short-term, the industry's power needs may inadvertently be extending the life of existing coal plants. Coal produces more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of power than any other energy source in the U.S. with the exception of oil, according to the Energy Information Administration. The tech industry has invested billions of dollars to expand renewable energy and is increasingly turning to nuclear power as a way to meet its growing electricity demand while trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that fuel climate change. For coal miners, Trump's push is a potential lifeline. The industry has been in decline as coal plants are being retired in the U.S. About 16% of U.S. electricity generation came from burning coal in 2023, down from 51% in 2001, according to EIA data. Peabody Energy CEO James Grech, who attended Trump's executive order ceremony at the White House, said "coal plants can shoulder a heavier load of meeting U.S. generation demands, including multiple years of data center growth." Peabody is one of the largest coal producers in the U.S. Grech said coal plants should ramp up how much power they dispatch. The nation's coal fleet is dispatching about 42% of its maximum capacity right now, compared to a historical average of 72%, the CEO told analysts on the company's May 6 earnings call. "We believe that all coal-powered generators need to defer U.S. coal plant retirements as the situation on the ground has clearly changed," Grech said. "We believe generators should un-retire coal plants that have recently been mothballed." There is a growing acknowledgment within the tech industry that fossil fuel generation will be needed to help meet the electricity demand from AI. But the focus is on natural gas, which emits less half the CO2 of coal per kilowatt hour of power, according the the EIA. "To have the energy we need for the grid, it's going to take an all of the above approach for a period of time," Kevin Miller, Amazon's vice president of global data centers, said during a panel discussion at conference of tech and oil and gas executives in Oklahoma City last month. "We're not surprised by the fact that we're going to need to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term," Miller said. Thermal generation is a code word for gas, said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure and power resources for data centers. Sahlstrom previously led Amazon's energy, water and sustainability teams. Executives at Amazon, Nvidia and Anthropic would not commit to using coal, mostly dodging the question when asked during the panel at the Oklahoma City conference. "It's never a simple answer," Amazon's Miller said. "It is a combination of where's the energy available, what are other alternatives." Nvidia is able to be agnostic about what type of power is used because of the position the chipmaker occupies on the AI value chain, said Josh Parker, the company's senior director of corporate sustainability. "Thankfully, we leave most of those decisions up to our customers." Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said there are a broader set of options available than just coal. "We would certainly consider it but I don't know if I'd say it's at the top of our list." Sahlstrom said Trump's executive order seems like a "dog whistle" to coal mining constituents. There is a big difference between looking at existing infrastructure and "actually building new power plants that are cost competitive and are going to be existing 30 to 40 years from now," the Tract executive said. Coal is being displaced by renewables, natural gas and existing nuclear as coal plants face increasingly difficult economics, Sahlstrom said. "Coal has kind of found itself without a job," he said. "I do not see the hyperscale community going out and signing long term commitments for new coal plants," the former Amazon executive said. (The tech companies ramping up AI are frequently referred to as "hyperscalers.") "I would be shocked if I saw something like that happen," Sahlstrom said. But coal plant retirements are creating a real challenge for the grid as electricity demand is increasing due to data centers, re-industrialization and the broader electrification of the economy. The largest grid in the nation, the PJM Interconnection, has forecast electricity demand could surge 40% by 2039. PJM warned in 2023 that 40 gigawatts of existing power generation, mostly coal, is at risk of retirement by 2030, which represents about 21% of PJM's installed capacity. Data centers will temporarily prolong coal demand as utilities scramble to maintain grid reliability, delaying their decarbonization goals, according to a Moody's report from last October. Utilities have already postponed the retirement of coal plants totaling about 39 gigawatts of power, according to data from the National Mining Association. "If we want to grow America's electricity production meaningfully over the next five or ten years, we [have] got to stop closing coal plants," Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC's "Money Movers" last month. But natural gas and renewables are the future, Sahlstrom said. Some 60% of the power sector's emissions reductions over the past 20 years are due to gas displacing coal, with the remainder coming from renewables, Sahlstrom said. "That's a pretty powerful combination, and it's hard for me to see people going backwards by putting more coal into the mix, particularly if you're a hyperscale customer who has net-zero carbon goals," he said.
RTÉ News
06-05-2025
- Politics
- RTÉ News
Mario Grech - Maltese cardinal an empowerment czar
A contender to be pope? With no official campaigning or list of candidates, there is much speculation about who will succeed Pope Francis. Here is one cardinal cited by some as a potential frontrunner. Maltese Cardinal Mario Grech, who played a key role in Pope Francis's efforts to empower ordinary Catholics, is a peace broker and potential compromise candidate for the papacy. Grech, 68, is secretary general of the Synod, heading the body that gathers information from local churches on crucial issues - such as the place of women or remarried divorcees - and passes it on to the pope. Francis, in 2021, asked Catholics their views on what needs to change in the Church, and two years later allowed lay people and women to vote in Synod assemblies, alongside bishops. Both acts - intended to create more co-responsibility in the Church's governance and make it relevant to today's faithful - have alarmed traditionalists who defend the all-male, clerical-based hierarchy. Appointed Synod chief in 2020, Grech managed to perform a delicate balancing act, following Francis's lead on creating an open, attentive Church while acknowledging the concerns of conservatives. Still, Grech has also described the "fraternal dialogue" between Catholics of all levels as essential to "help all assemblies - political, economic, scientific - to become places of encounter and not of confrontation". The periphery Grech was born on 20 February 1957, in Qala, a village on Gozo, the second-largest island in the tiny Mediterranean archipelago of Malta. He was ordained in 1984 and travelled to Rome for a doctorate in canon law. Back in Malta, he served at the Gozo Cathedral and at the Ta' Pinu national Marian shrine before becoming a parish pastor. Pope Benedict XVI appointed him bishop of Gozo in 2005, and he was made cardinal by Francis in 2020. Grech - who held a more conservative stance earlier in his career before becoming more progressive - has warned that Catholicism cannot be reduced to praying in church, but must be practised in everyday life, such as by helping others, reconciling with neighbours and living a life of service. "The large community church is made up of small churches that gather in homes," he said in a 2020 interview with the Civilta Cattolica magazine. "If there is no domestic church, the church has no future," he said. Listening Grech had already shown an affinity with liberal-leaning Francis in 2017, when he and another Maltese bishop released pastoral guidelines broadly favourable to opening the door to remarried divorced people. While in line with Francis's call for such flexibility and compassion, Grech's move was seen as trailblazing by the Church's liberal wing and sparked anger among conservatives. The same tensions emerged over the Synod, particularly following the release by the Vatican in June of a document showing ordinary Catholics were calling for an opening to the LGBTQ community. Grech has brushed off accusations there is a "hostile takeover" of the Church underway, and says his department has merely listened - to everyone, including those who "could not or did not want to" speak.
