Europe

French President Emmanuel Macron met Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, focusing on the Iran crisis and advocating for diplomacy. Both leaders criticised US President Donald Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. Macron’s visit, devoid of political meetings with Italian officials, underscored institutional and religious engagement.

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Stressed and disengaged employees risk productivity, with Gallup estimating a global GDP loss of 9% in its 2026 report. Employee engagement has reached a low of 20%, with Europe showing the least engagement levels, particularly among younger, non-managerial workers, demonstrating a pressing workplace issue.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday praised former finance minister and European Commission president Jacques Delors at a state funeral, saying he had “reconciled Europe with its future”. FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris-Trent reports.

Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, is facing increasingly strong opposition inside the Vatican. The conservative clan of the Roman Curia – the powerful governing body of the Holy See – accuses him of a laxist vision of Catholic doctrine, particularly regarding the status of homosexual couples and divorced people in the Church. Our Rome correspondent Natalia Mendoza reports from the Vatican’s corridors of power on this growing conflict between tradition and modernity.

As the second anniversary of the Ukraine conflict looms, the female relatives of Russia’s mobilised men are becoming more and more outspoken in calling for their loved ones to come home, with their pickets and impassioned appeals gaining traction on social media. Their activism, despite being largely ignored by state media, remains a sensitive issue for the Kremlin, which is keen to project an image of national unity around President Vladimir Putin ahead of his inevitable re-election in a vote this March.

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