Category: World

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s last words were “Lord, I love you,” his longtime secretary said Sunday, quoting a nurse who helped care for the 95-year-old former pontiff in his final hours.

Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, a German prelate who lived in the Vatican monastery where Benedict took up residence after his 2013 retirement, said the nurse recounted hearing Benedict utter those words at about 3 a.m. Saturday. The retired pope died later that morning.

“Benedict XVI, with a faint voice but in a very distinct way, said in Italian, ‘Lord, I love you,’″ Gaenswein told the Vatican’s official media, adding that it happened when the aides tending to Benedict were changing shifts.

“I wasn’t there in that moment, but the nurse a little later recounted it,″ the archbishop said. ”They were his last comprehensible words, because afterwards, he wasn’t able to express himself any more.”

Gaenswein did not identify the male nurse who shared the information.

Earlier, the Vatican said that Pope Francis went to pay his respects immediately after Gaenswein called to inform him of Benedict’s death shortly after 9:30 a.m. Saturday Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis stayed in Benedict’s monastery for quite some time before returning to his residence in a hotel located across the Vatican Gardens.

During New Year’s Day remarks on Sunday, Francis prayed for his predecessor’s passage to heaven and expressed thanks for Benedict’s lifetime of service to the church.

Francis departed briefly from reading his homily during a morning Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica to pray aloud for Benedict.

“Today we entrust to our Blessed Mother our beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, so that she may accompany him in his passage from this world to God,” he said.

The basilica is set to host Benedict’s coffin for three days of viewing that start Monday.

Rome Prefect Bruno Frattasi, an Interior Ministry official, told Italian state TV that “no fewer than 25,000, 30,000” mourners were expected to file past the coffin on Monday.

On Sunday, Benedict’s body lay on a burgundy-colored bier in the chapel of the monastery where he had lived during his nearly decade-long retirement. He was dressed in a miter, the headgear of a bishop, and a red cloak-like vestment.

A rosary was placed in his hand. Behind him, visible in photos released by the Vatican, were the chapel’s altar and a decorated Christmas tree.

Francis remembered Benedict again later Sunday while addressing thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square. He told the crowd that “in these hours, we invoke her intercession, in particular for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who, yesterday morning, left this world.”

“Let us unite all together, with one heart and one soul, in giving thanks to God for the gift of this faithful servant of the Gospel and of the church,″ Francis said, speaking from a window of the Apostolic Palace to pilgrims and tourists below.

The square will be the setting for Benedict’s funeral led by Francis on Thursday morning. The service will be a simple one, the Vatican has said, in keeping with the wishes of Benedict. Before he was elected pope in 2005, Benedict was a German cardinal who served as the Church’s guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy.

In recent years, Francis hailed Benedict’s stunning decision to become the first pope to resign in 600 years and has made clear he’d consider such a step as an option for himself.

Hobbled by knee pain, Francis, 86, on Sunday arrived in the basilica in a wheelchair and took his place in a chair for the Mass, which was being celebrated by the Vatican’s secretary of state.

Francis, who has repeatedly decried the war in Ukraine and its devastation, recalled those who are victims of war, passing the year-end holidays in darkness, cold and fear.

“At the beginning of this year, we need hope, just as the Earth needs rain,” Francis said in his homily.

While addressing the faithful in St. Peter’s Square, the pope cited the “intolerable” war in Ukraine, which began more than 10 months ago, and conflicts elsewhere other places in the world.

Yet, Francis said, “let us not lose hope” that peace will prevail.

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Nicole Winfield contributed from the Vatican.

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More on the death of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI: https://apnews.com/hub/pope-benedict-xvi

CHRISTIANSTED, U.S. Virgin Islands (AP) — President Joe Biden and top administration officials will open a new year of divided government by fanning out across the country to talk about how the economy is benefiting from his work with Democrats and Republicans.

As part of the pitch, Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell will make a rare joint appearance in McConnell’s home state of Kentucky on Wednesday to highlight nearly $1 trillion in infrastructure spending that lawmakers approved on a bipartisan basis in 2021.

The Democratic president will also be joined by a bipartisan group of elected officials when he visits the Kentucky side of the Cincinnati area, including Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, the White House said.

Biden’s bipartisanship blitz was announced two days before Republicans retake control of the House from Democrats on Tuesday following GOP gains in the November elections. The shift ends unified political control of Congress by Democrats and complicates Biden’s future legislative agenda. Democrats will remain in charge in the Senate.

Before he departed Washington for vacation at the end of last year, Biden appealed for less partisanship, saying he hoped everyone will see each other “not as Democrats or Republicans, not as members of ‘Team Red’ or ‘Team Blue,’ but as who we really are, fellow Americans.”

The president’s trip appeared tied to a recent announcement by Kentucky and Ohio that they will receive more than $1.63 billion in federal grants to help build a new Ohio River bridge near Cincinnati and improve the existing overloaded span there, a heavily used freight route linking the Midwest and the South.

Congestion at the Brent Spence Bridge on Interstates 75 and 71 has for years been a frustrating bottleneck on a key shipping corridor and a symbol of the nation’s growing infrastructure needs. Officials say the bridge was built in the 1960s to carry around 80,000 vehicles a day but has seen double that traffic load on its narrow lanes, leading the Federal Highway Administration to declare it functionally obsolete.

The planned project covers about 8 miles (12 kilometers) and includes improvements to the bridge and some connecting roads and construction of a companion span nearby. Both states coordinated to request funding under the nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal signed in 2021 by Biden, who had highlighted the project as the legislation moved through Congress.

McConnell said the companion bridge “will be one of the bill’s crowning accomplishments.”

DeWine said both states have been discussing the project for almost two decades “and now, we can finally move beyond the talk and get to work.”

Officials hope to break ground later this year and complete much of the work by 2029.

Biden’s visit could also provide a political boost to Beshear, who is seeking reelection this year in his overwhelmingly Republican state.

In a December 2022 interview with The Associated Press, Beshear gave a mixed review of Biden’s job performance. Biden had joined Beshear to tour tornado- and flood-stricken regions of Kentucky last year.

“There are things that I think have been done well, and there are things that I wish would have been done better,” Beshear said of Biden.

Other top administration officials will also help promote Biden’s economic policies this week.

In Chicago on Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris will discuss “how the President’s economic plan is rebuilding our infrastructure, creating good-paying jobs – jobs that don’t require a four-year degree, and revitalizing communities left behind,” the White House said in its announcement.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was delivering the same message in New London, Connecticut, also on Wednesday.

Mitch Landrieu, the White House official tasked with promoting infrastructure spending, will join soon-to-be former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday in San Francisco, which she represents in Congress.

Biden was scheduled to return to the White House on Monday after spending nearly a week with family on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The president opened New Year’s Day on Sunday by watching the first sunrise of 2023 and attending Mass at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Christiansted, where he has attended religious services during his past visits to the island.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The election contests of 2022 may have been held and decided, but Ohio’s political maps remain far from settled.

It was supposed to be a once-per-decade process for redrawing the state’s U.S. House and Statehouse districts, in order to reflect updated population figures from the 2020 Census. Now it promises to extend into 2023, and probably longer.

While most U.S. states managed to eventually settle their map disputes, Ohio’s protracted ordeal has trapped it in a uniquely confounding legal stalemate.

Here’s a look at how Ohio got here, and what may (or may not) come next:

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HOW DID THE NEW MAPMAKING PROCESS WORK?

This was the first time Ohio tried out new ways of drawing congressional and legislative maps.

In 2015, Ohio voters were looking to avoid partisan gerrymandering, and voted overwhelmingly to empower a new, bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission to draw Statehouse maps. Those are the districts of the state senators and representatives whom voters send to Columbus.

Under the new rules, if both political parties said yes to the new boundaries, the maps would be in place for a full decade. Single-party support would result in a four-year map.

In 2018, another successful constitutional amendment was also wildly popular with voters. It set up a new system for drawing the state’s U.S. House districts — that is, the districts of the representatives that voters send to Washington.

The state Legislature would get the first crack at drawing the lines. If they failed, the commission would be next. If it failed, then the Legislature could try a final time. A three-fifths majority of the minority party — in this case, Democrats — would need to agree to the new map for it to be in place for 10 years. Barring that, again, it would last only four years.

As it turned out, the seeming incentives for bipartisan compromise failed and Democrats didn’t cast a single vote for any of the final maps, which were all Republican-drawn.

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WHAT POWER DID THE NEW SYSTEM GIVE THE STATE’S HIGH COURT?

Voters gave the Ohio Supreme Court “exclusive, original jurisdiction” to decide legal challenges, which included three lawsuits against the legislative maps and two lawsuits against the congressional map.

In a series of 4-3 votes, the court struck down every map they were sent. The court said the maps unduly benefited one party: Republicans. Those maps included two separate congressional maps — one approved by lawmakers in November 2021 and a second that cleared the redistricting commission in March 2022 — and five sets of Statehouse maps.

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YET OHIO’S ELECTIONS HAPPENED ANYWAY?

That’s right. Amid the legal clashes of the past year, courts allowed Ohio to go forward with May and August primaries under unconstitutional maps.

This fall, Republicans won 10 of Ohio’s 15 congressional seats under the disputed U.S. House map (although Democrats netted several notable wins ). The disputed Statehouse maps yielded even larger Republican supermajorities.

But the maps aren’t valid beyond this election cycle. They will need to be redrawn.

OK, SO THE MAPS DIDN’T FLY. WERE THERE CONSEQUENCES?

That’s the conundrum. Even as they missed deadlines and flouted court instructions, Republicans argued that they were doing all they could to understand and interpret a fledgling process. The court’s orders were unreasonable and conflicting, they said.

The voting-rights and Democratic groups that won seven consecutive rounds in court argued for lawmakers or commissioners to be held in contempt of court.

Ultimately, the justices balked. Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor told The Associated Press in a year-end interview that she feared taking such action would create a constitutional crisis.

Importantly, the Ohio Supreme Court had no other enforcement options available to it. The new system neither allowed the court to impose a particular map — say, one favored by the suing parties or developed by experts — nor to draw their own.

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WHERE DO THOSE CASES STAND NOW?

Ohio’s congressional map dispute is now awaiting action in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Republican legislative leaders have appealed for a review of their loss in state court.

The case could be considered in conjunction with the closely watched Moore v. Harper case, whose oral arguments were held in December. That case seeks to resolve whether the U.S. Constitution’s provision giving state legislatures the power to make the rules about the “times, places and manner” of congressional elections means state courts can be cut out of the process.

If Ohio’s appeal is denied, Republican Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp has said lawmakers will then have 30 days to pass a new congressional map. But the high court’s decision isn’t expected for months.

Meanwhile, Ohio’s legislative maps expired with the November 2022 election — on orders of a federal court. The Ohio Redistricting Commission will have to come back together and make new, constitutionally compliant maps in time for 2024 elections. The state constitution says that process can’t begin before July 1 of this year. Lawsuits challenging Statehouse maps, which ended in a draw this summer, remain open.

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HAVE OHIO’S POLITICAL DYNAMICS CHANGED?

Yes and no. The Ohio Redistricting Commission — made up of the governor, secretary of state, auditor and four lawmakers — remained 5-2 in Republicans’ favor after the November elections.

Cupp, a key player in the redistricting saga, is retiring, but his successor will also be Republican.

But the Ohio Supreme Court’s political leaning may have changed.

O’Connor, a Republican who was a key swing vote on the court, retired Saturday because of age limits. The ascension of her successor, GOP Justice Sharon Kennedy, left a court vacancy to which Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has appointed Republican Joe Deters, the longtime Hamilton County prosecutor.

Time will tell whether Deters sides with the 7-member court’s other three Republican justices — unlike O’Connor — altering earlier case outcomes.

For her part, O’Connor has announced plans to pursue redistricting reforms in the Ohio Constitution, likely the type of independent commission she wrote about in one of her decisions. Many others are collaborating on similar efforts. The timing of any ballot campaign hasn’t been determined.