The people at the dog park, the bank teller, the regular waiter — these casual relationships may be “weak ties,” but they’re also a key to well-being.
Victoria Tirondola and Lam Gong first struck up a conversation last spring at the dog run in Brookdale Park in Bloomfield, N.J., when they realized that each owned a dog named Abby. Ms. Tirondola, 65, an insurance sales representative who lives in nearby Cedar Grove, has a tiny bichon-poodle mix. Mr. Gong’s Abby, older and portlier, is a terrier-beagle.
They chatted about dogs at first. Then they learned that they both cooked, so “we talked about food and restaurants,” said Mr. Gong, 67, a retiree living in Clifton.
“And how much better my cooking is than his,” put in Ms. Tirondola. They were sitting on a bench, as the dogs dashed around on a warm spring afternoon, with a third member of a growing collection of regulars: Pattie Marsh, dog walker for a miniature Australian shepherd named Ollie.
“All of us live alone,” Ms. Tirondola said. “My mom just passed away in July, and we were very close. Lam lost his wife a few years ago.”
“It gives us companionship” to meet at the Bark Park, said Ms. Marsh, 55. She and Ms. Tirondola, who bonded as born-again Christians, come daily. Mr. Gong joins them once or twice a week. So does Lee Geanoules, 69, a part-time restaurant server from Clifton, who soon arrived with Charlie, a pug and beagle blend.
Psychologists and sociologists call these sorts of connections “weak ties” or “peripheral ties,” in contrast to close ties to family members and intimate friends. Some researchers investigating weak ties include in that category classmates, co-workers, neighbors and fellow religious congregants. Others look into interactions with near-strangers at coffee shops or on transit routes.
People who cross paths at the dog run, for instance, may recognize other regulars without knowing their names (though they probably know their dogs’ names) or anything much about them. Nevertheless, impromptu chats about pets or the weather often arise, and they’re important.
Such seemingly trivial interactions have been shown to boost people’s positive moods and reduce their odds of depressed moods. “Weak ties matter, not just for our moods but our health,” said Gillian Sandstrom, a psychologist at the University of Sussex in England who has researched their impact.
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The remarkable Good Friday Agreement – essay by Heather Cox Richardson
I love Northern Ireland. I love the people. I love the place. They’ve been extraordinarily generous and hospitable to me and my wife, my family,” former senator George Mitchell of Maine told Jill Lawless of the Associated Press today at Queen’s University, located in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland.
Mitchell, who is 89 years old and is being treated for leukemia, has avoided public events for three years, but he traveled to Belfast this week to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that he helped to hammer out in 1998.
This anniversary is no small thing.
In April 1998, after 30 years of violence that became known as “the Troubles,” Mitchell helped to broker a peace between the British government, the Irish government, and eight political parties from Northern Ireland. It was not an easy negotiation. Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom when the rest of Ireland became an independent state in 1921. From the 1960s until the 1990s, Northern Ireland was torn between those who wanted it to stay part of the United Kingdom-—mostly Protestants—and those who wanted it to join the rest of Ireland, who were mostly Catholics.
The conflict between the two looked much like a civil war, and more than 3,500 people, mostly civilians, died in the violence.
In 1995, Mitchell had just retired from his position as Democratic Senate majority leader when then-president Bill Clinton asked him to become a special envoy to Northern Ireland. For the next five years, Mitchell would chair three separate sets of peace talks. “It seemed like 50 years at the time,” he told Lawless. “But we persevered and prevailed.”
On April 19, 1943, a group of Jews living inside the Nazi-created Warsaw Ghetto in Poland began an armed uprising against Hitler’s occupying forces. The monthlong fight represented the largest and most robust retaliation against SS troops who were systematically murdering millions of European Jews.
As part of the Nazis’ plans to annihilate the Jewish people, they created ghettos, forcing thousands of Jews into small, cramped parts of major cities and limited access to food and supplies. The Warsaw Ghetto, bound by a 10-foot wall and barbed wire, was the largest — sealing 400,000 Jews inside its 1.3 square mile area by 1942, according to the United States Holocaust Museum.
After the Nazis began liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, sending tens of thousands of Jews to be murdered in concentration camps, a group of Jewish resistance fighters began a plan to retaliate, gatheringarms from anti-Hitler forces in the Polish military underground.
On the eve of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, there were between 50,000-60,000 Jews in the ghetto. About 700 young Jews began their fight against SS officers the day after the Jewish holiday of Passover, 80 years ago today, and it lasted almost a month. It ended on May 16 when the Nazis leveled the ghetto, ultimately bringing the Jews who did not die in the battle to concentration camps where they would be killed.
Legislation intended to reduce the use of plastics and boost recycling is seeing mixed results as this year’s legislative session enters its final week.
Democratic lawmakers failed to pass ambitious recycling proposals, but successfully passed a bill that could help reduce the use of single-use plastics.
The Plastics Reduction Bill, championed by freshman Rep. Sharlett Mena, D-Tacoma, is on Gov. Jay Inslee’s desk.
Once signed, the bill requires water bottle filling stations in new buildings, eliminates single-use plastics for personal care products in hotels, and reduces pollution from foam-filled floats and docks.
It faced relatively little opposition in the Legislature. The bill could make “a big dent in our constant and ongoing efforts to reduce plastic pollution in the environment,” Mena said.
A recent poll conducted by Oceana found 92% of Washington voters are concerned about single-use plastic products, and 91% say they are concerned about plastic pollution and its effect on the environment. The vast majority of Washington voters (87%) support local and state policies that reduce single-use plastic.
The bill, extremely popular with youth advocates, Mena said, has also provided an avenue for Washington students to engage with the legislative process.
“It’s something I get a lot of emails about from youth. Anything we can do to engage youth in the process so they can learn that they do have a voice and a place in our government is going to pay dividends well into the future with a healthy democracy and future leaders,” Mena said.
But another bill attempting to better regulate waste in Washington died an early death.
The Washington Recycling and Packaging Act was an ambitious pitch to put some of the cost of recycling on the businesses making the packaging. It didn’t make the first cutoff.
“That was the biggest bill that was considered this session” related to the environment, said Rep. Beth Doglio, D-Olympia. “It’s the first time that the House had contemplated such a significant change to the way that we recycle in the state.”
The bill would’ve helped ensure every household has the same understanding of how to increase their recycling, and expanded recycling services to more than 300,000 households.
Those changes to the system would have been funded by businesses that produce paper and packaging through payments into a producer responsibility organization. And the bill would’ve added incentives for consumers to recycle.
Doglio said she’s excited to revisit the bill next session.Vonnai Phair: 206-464-2757 or vphair@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @vonnaiphair. Vonnai Phair covers morning breaking news and enterprise for The Seattle Times.Isabella Breda: 206-652-6536 or ibreda@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @BredaIsabella. Seattle Times staff reporter Isabella Breda covers the environment.
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You may have seen the article in the Seattle Times’ Pacific NW on Sunday, but if you missed it you can read it by clicking here! The ACT study reminds us to exercise, control diabetes and hypertension and to keep active in our community–a good recipe for resilience.
Posted inDementia, happiness, Health|Comments Off on Tracking King County seniors (and their brains) for clues to dementia and Alzheimer’s
Ed Note: David Williams is the son of one of our residents — Jackie!
The 1960s was time of change in Seattle. For most of the decade no Canada geese called our waterways home. But in April 1968, the story of the big black and gray birds began to be rewritten. Early in the morning on April 11, 25 men from the Washington state Department of Game and the U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife gathered at a small island. They were 17 miles up the Columbia River from the nearly complete John Day Dam. Their plan, code named Operation Mother Goose, was simple: crews would powerboat out and collect eggs from islands soon to be flooded by Lake Umatilla.
After the state men collected enough eggs, which they placed in goose down-lined boxes, a helicopter took the bounty to the Kennewick Game Farm, a facility established to raise game birds for hunting. Biologists then determined the stage of embryo development and placed them into incubators.
About 1,000 of the 1,200 eggs collected at the islands over two days, hatched over the next 32 days. Most of the young geese survived at the game farm, although nearly a 100 suffocated under other goslings. Within four weeks, each rapidly growing goose was eating more than a pound of feed each day.
Canada goose and chicks, WDFW
Operation Mother Goose was so named because biologists hoped the goslings could learn from and join wild flocks of geese and soon become fully fledged members of goose society. Workers released the first geese into the wild at McNary Refuge and McNary Game Farm at the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers. Total distribution numbered 900 geese, mostly to state properties near the Columbia, but Mother Goose also delivered her young to Arizona Fish and Game, Idaho Fish and Game, and the city of Spokane.
The Biden administration today announced a series of actions it has taken and will continue to take to disrupt the production and distribution of illegal street fentanyl around the world. The efforts involve the Department of Justice, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the State Department; the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP); the Office of National Drug Control Policy; and the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the Treasury Department.
On a press call today, various administration officials gave an overview of the crisis. Calling street fentanyl “the deadliest drug threat that our country has ever faced,” an official from the DEA explained that all of the street fentanyl in the U.S. comes from Mexico at the hands of two cartels: the Sinaloa and the Jalisco.
Most of the street fentanyl in the U.S. is distributed by the Sinaloa cartel, which operates in every U.S. state and in 47 countries. This cartel used to be led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who began serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison in 2019 after Mexican authorities arrested him and extradited him to the U.S. Now four of his sons run it: Ovidio, Iván, Joaquín, and Alfredo, who are known as the “Chapitos.” DEA administrator Anne Milgram said they took their father’s “global drug trafficking empire” and “made it more ruthless, more violent, more deadly—and they used it to spread a new poison, fentanyl.” (continued)
The Instagram account for a certain Mini Sheepadoodle named Bayley is going viral, thanks to the adorable black-and-white pooch’s astounding and uncanny resemblance to Snoopy, the canine mascot for the Peanuts cartoon troupe.
Bayley, who according to the pup’s Instagram page will be two years old next month, sports the same oblong face as Snoopy, along with the exact same color distribution – a white face and muzzle, adorable round black nose and furry, floppy black ears.
The pooch is also surprisingly photogenic, posing calmly for perfect photos and video throughout the pet-centric social media page.
While Snoopy is known to be a beagle, Bayley’s breed of Mini Sheepadoodle – the result of crossing an Old English Sheepdog with a Miniature Poodle – has resulted in a near carbon copy of the drawn animal, in real life.
Snoopy is the famously silent dog that originated in the “Peanuts” comic strip by Charles M. Schulz in October of 1950. He also appeared in various “Peanuts” television specials, and has been a fixture as a giant balloon in New York City’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Snoopy is showing up elsewhere in the news on Wednesday, as a t-shirt sporting his personage is gaining in popularity as part of a nationwide American Red Cross-led effort to drive up blood donations.
On Tuesday, on the occasion of National Pet Day, Bayley’s owner posted yet another irresistible snippet of the gorgeous animal, along with the caption, “Mom says I am the cutest pet she has ever seen but to be fair, I am her first and the only furbaby.”
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AT THE AGE of 92, Betty Roberson’s vision might be blurred, but her mind is sharp.
When she’s not flipping through audio versions of The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs and other magazines, she’s been listening recently to a biography of Teddy Roosevelt. One of her latest musical fascinations is British dance bands of the 1920s and ‘30s.
And since her troublesome right hip was replaced in late January, she’s been able to resume daily walks and is eager to start gardening again.
“I’ve always enjoyed studying and being physically active,” Roberson says, sitting at the dining room table in her half of the duplex she shares with her daughter in Bellevue. “I don’t get bored.”
Roberson’s mother and an aunt developed dementia in their 90s, so she’s alert for slips in her own cognition. So, too, is a team of researchers who have been monitoring her for nearly a quarter of a century.
Roberson is part of one of the world’s longest-running and most comprehensive studies of aging, Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Along with thousands of other seniors across King County, she undergoes a battery of tests every two years to gauge her mental acuity, strength and balance, emotional well-being, and overall health.
The project, called Adult Changes in Thought (ACT), was officially launched in 1994. But its roots reach back to 1986, when Dr. Eric Larson and his colleagues at UW Medicine got their first federal grant to work with dementia patients. In those days, little was known about normal aging, let alone what was commonly called senility, Larson recalls. The timing was fortuitous, because funding for Alzheimer’s research was about to explode.
“I would never have dreamed back in the late ‘80s that we’d still be doing this and that it would have grown so much,” Larson says. “ACT has become a living, learning laboratory of aging — especially brain aging.”
1 of 5 | Betty Roberson smiles during a visit with her family in Bellevue, Wash. Tuesday, March 7, 2023. 223196 (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)1 of 5 | Stella, 1, plays during a visit in Bellevue with her great-grandmother Betty Roberson, left; her mother, Lynn Rosendahl, right; and grandmother Kim Roberson, not pictured. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)
OVER NEARLY 30 years, the study has enrolled more than 5,800 people aged 65 or older with the aim of following them through the rest of their lives. None of the participants have dementia when they enter the study. All are randomly selected members of Kaiser Permanente Washington’s health care system — originally Group Health Cooperative — with medical records that stretch back a decade or more. Many, like Roberson, agree to donate their brains to the study after their deaths.
Ed note: Anyone can join Kaiser’s Senior Caucus tomorrow for its Friday, April 14th webinar that will be held from 10:00 am – 11:30 am. The Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/91840672295. Eric Larson will be discussing his research on the aging brain – an exceptional longitudinal study called the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study. Eric has spoken here at Skyline in the past.
Speakers for the upcoming webinar include:
Eric B Larson, MD, MPH, with colleagues from University of Washington and Group Health received a demonstration grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a model Alzheimer’s disease registry in 1986. This morphed into the landmark Adult Changes in Thought study with the establishment of the initial cohort of 2581 randomly selected volunteers who joined the study 1994-96. Larson, a general internist and eventually professor of medicine at University of Washington He came to Seattle as a UW fellow in 1975 after training in Boston at Harvard Medical School. He was Medical Director at UWMC and Associated Dean for clinical affairs 1989-2002 before moving to Group Health in 2002 to lead the Center for Health Studies. He also believed in the tremendous scientific potential of the ACT study if it could achieve continuous funding over many years. At Group Health /Kaiser Permanente Washington he eventually became the Executive Director of the Research Institute and Vice President for Research and Health Innovation. He recently retired from KPW, July 2002, and continues to work part time from his position in UW’s Department of Medicine as a Professor of Medicine.
Dr. Larson’s presentation will provide an overview of the ACT study, the major expansion of funding for ACT and its related studies, and highlights in how our understanding of the aging brain and conditions like Alzheimer’s Disease has changed and will likely change even more from ongoing studies. He will highlight how what we know about the aging brain is relevant to everyday life of older adults including their medical care. He has spoken to the Senior Caucus many times since coming to Group Health and enjoys the opportunity to share his knowledge and his appreciation of seniors who generously participate in ACT and other research at KPWHRI.
Chris Fordyce, retired MD and Senior Caucus chair will be announcing the new 2023-24 Board of Directors of the Senior Caucus along with general announcements about exciting new programs going forward. Chris will also be giving an important COVID coverage update.
This webinar will be recorded for those unable to attend. Thank you.
Have you noticed a lot of people turning 90 lately?
OK, maybe not a lot. But President Biden, 80, is saying he plans to run for re-election in 2024. His fans are going to be super-aware of anything that suggests he isn’t all that old.
I was thinking about this when I got invited to a 90th-birthday party recently — shortly after I went to a lunch a friend threw to celebrate her 95th. Kinda wondered if I was looking at a new trend.
Yeah, the really-truly-older cadre is zooming — thanks, boomers! The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that by 2060, the number of people 85-plus will have tripled compared with 2017 and the country will have half a million centenarians.
Today we’re not going to discuss the social-support angle; obviously, many of these folks will need a lot of care. Or the fact that while the old are getting older, overall life expectancy in America has actually been dropping, thanks to guns, drugs and Covid.
Now we’re just going to focus on what all these post-90s mean to the way we view the world. Is Biden being 80-plus a big deal when Gloria Steinem just had a party to celebrate her 89th?
“Ninety is the new 60,” declared Muriel Fox, one of the founders of the modern women’s movement. “I’ve got several great friends in their 100s.” Fox recently invited some pals to her turning-95 luncheon, and I’m really liking the idea that being a feminist pioneer can add decades to your life span.
Steinem, who’s off celebrating 89 with a tour of Zambia, is feeling mellow, too. “I’m very conscious that I’m already past the average life expectancy,” she told me via email. “Yet also past many worries about job, family, saving for the future — this is the future!”
Of course, not everybody’s so enthusiastic about hitting markers that make our president look youthful. “It’s something I don’t think about,” said the composer John Kander, who, at 96, is currently busy publicizing “New York, New York,” his new Broadway musical.
The people who really need to get their heads around the age thing are younger. It’s clearly dumb to treat the … older as a doddering population of great-great-grandparents. People will just start wondering whether you’re the one who’s out of it.
For instance, the other day the Republican speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, pressed his demands for a negotiation with Biden on the budget by sniping, “I would bring lunch to the White House. I would make it soft food, if that’s what he wants.” Now, McCarthy is a mere 58, but this kind of thing is just going to encourage people to compare his pathetic performance as speaker with that of his predecessor Nancy Pelosi, who held the post until this January, when she was 82.
None of this is to argue that Biden’s plan to run for re-election (announcement coming — soonish!) shouldn’t lead to serious discussion about age. He’d be 86 when a second term ended. Hard to think of a whole lot of 86-year-old world leaders who are currently on the job. Well, Pope Francis. King Harald V of Norway. And if we’re saluting the 90-somethings, we have to add President Paul Biya of Cameroon.
Biden was already the oldest president ever elected when he came into office at 78. Second oldest was, um, Donald Trump at 70.
I would love to cite a list of really great presidents who served in their 70s, but alas, the third oldest at the time of his election was Ronald Reagan, 69, who was eventually rumored to have Alzheimer’s, followed by William Henry Harrison, 68, who died a month into his term.
Dwight Eisenhower, who served from age 62 to 70, starting in the 1950s, was one of the oldest presidents in office. That was back “when 62 was considered really ancient,” said the presidential historian Michael Beschloss.
And Ike seemed older — while he was in the White House, he suffered from a heart attack and a stroke. “It’s never been age; it’s always been illness,” Beschloss said.
Yeah, the number doesn’t matter nearly as much as the condition. And how you appear to the outside world. My friend who had the recent 90th-birthday party doesn’t want to be quoted by name because he’s doing a lot of very high-end, action-packed projects and wants the folks he’s working with to judge him by what he does, not the calendar.
But said friend is an expert on making things look good on camera, and he complained that Biden is being “very, very badly served” by handlers who have him slowly walking onstage when he’s about to give an address. The president, he noted, doesn’t exactly “spring to the podium. Why don’t they just have him sitting at a desk like — hello — F.D.R.?”
Still, Biden on a bike looks a lot better than Trump on a golf course. We will not discuss or even contemplate Trump on a bicycle.
With the two of them competing to be president in their 80s, there does seem to be a real opening for somebody who’s ambitious and younger. Like, say, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is 44.
“I’m deeply worried about where a significant part of our population is when it comes to trust with our media and what that lack of trust means for our government, our democracy, who we are as a… (Greg Gilbert / The Seattle Times, 2022)More
Helping save local journalism in Washington state is a priority for Attorney General Bob Ferguson.
That’s partly why he joined eight other state attorneys general and the U.S. Department of Justice in an epic antitrust case, alleging that Google monopolizes online advertising technology.
It’s also why Ferguson joined state legislators in proposing a tax break to help newspapers sustain operations and preserve jobs. He backed Senate Bill 5199, which would give publishers a 10-year exemption from business and occupation taxes.
Of course this could help Ferguson pursue newspaper endorsements if he runs for governor, as expected, in 2024.
But like many lawyers, Ferguson appreciates the essential role of the press in a constitutional democracy. He worries that the state and nation are harmed by the erosion of local news coverage and trust in media.
“I’m deeply worried about where a significant part of our population is when it comes to trust with our media and what that lack of trust means for our government, our democracy, who we are as a people,” he said. “I’m really concerned.”
By Emily Largent, Andrew Peterson and Jason Karlawish in the NYT
Drs. Largent and Karlawish are senior fellows at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, where they are also professors at the Perelman School of Medicine. Dr. Peterson is an assistant professor at the George Mason University Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy.
Conservative Texans and liberal Californians disagree on much in politics. But legislators in both states agree on a new approach to giving people with cognitive impairments a greater chance for self-determination. It’s called supported decision-making, and it is shaping up to be the most consequential change in the care of older people and others with limitations in mental functioning since the rise of advance care directives in the 1990s.
The difference between guardianship, the traditional way to help those with such impairments, and supported decision-making is analogous to the difference between a dictatorship and self-rule. Unlike guardianship, which creates an all-powerful guardian and strips the subject of the right to make decisions, in supported decision-making, the individual retains final control over key decisions. That person enlists one or more trusted others, such as family members or close friends, to aid him in making decisions. The supporters are there only to assist.
The National Council on Disability rightfully describes this approach as “the most promising and comprehensive alternative to guardianship.” More support for these life-affirming arrangements is needed.
Britney Spears’s public efforts to end the nearly 14-year guardianship she was under cast a light on problems with the arrangement that too often remain in the shadows. In seeking to end her guardianship, Ms. Spears testified in court: “I truly believe this conservatorship is abusive. I don’t feel like I can live a full life.” A judge in Los Angeles concluded in 2021 that the guardianship was no longer needed and terminated it.
Of course, some people can’t make decisions even with support. They may be suffering from the effects of a severe traumatic brain injury or late-stage dementia. For them, guardianship remains necessary. But many others with limitations don’t entirely lack the ability to make their own decisions. Forcing them to surrender authority to a guardian strips away their self-determination and dignity and could leave them prone to abuse.
In 2015, Texas became the first state to recognize supported decision-making. And last fall, California joined Texas and at least 13 other states and the District of Columbia in establishing comprehensive legal frameworks for these arrangements. Several more states require that such agreements be considered before a guardian is appointed. Legislation has previously been introduced in states as varied as Massachusetts, Oregon, New Mexico and West Virginia.
At the federal level, the Senate Special Committee on Aging held a hearing last week on supported decision-making and other less restrictive alternatives to guardianship. Committee members from both parties applauded states backing supported decision-making innovation, and Senator Bob Casey, the committee chairman, said he planned to introduce legislation that would require courts to consider supported decision making and other approaches for people who need help managing their lives.
In an Easter message highlighting hope, Pope Francis on Sunday invoked prayers for both the Ukrainian and Russian people, praised nations that welcome refugees, and called on Israelis and Palestinians wracked by the latest surge in deadly violence to forge a “climate of trust.”
Francis, along with dozens of prelates and tens of thousands of faithful, marked Christianity’s most joyful day with Mass in a flower-adorned St. Peter’s Square. Easter proclaims the Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead after crucifixion.
The 86-year-old pontiff topped the celebration with a traditional speech about troubled places in the world. Encouraging “trust among individuals, peoples and nations,” Francis said the joyful expression of Easter “illumines the darkness and gloom in which, all too often, our world finds itself enveloped.”
The pope’s Easter message is known by its Latin name, ”Urbi et Orbi,” which means “to the city and the world.”
Since Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine in February 2022, Francis has repeatedly called for the fighting to end and sought prayers for the “martyred” Ukrainian people.
Ukrainian diplomats have complained that he hasn’t come down hard enough in his statements on Russia and particularly Russian President Vladimir Putin as the Vatican tries to avoid alienating Russia.
“Help the beloved Ukrainian people on their journey toward peace, and shed the light of Easter upon the people of Russia,” Francis implored God in his Easter speech, which he delivered while sitting in a chair on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica facing the square. ”Comfort the wounded and all those who have lost loved ones because of the war, and grant that prisoners may return safe and sound to their families.”
He urged the international community to work to end the war in Ukraine and “all conflict and bloodshed in the world, beginning with Syria, which still awaits peace.” Francis also prayed for those who lost loved ones in an earthquake that struck Syria and Turkey two months ago, claiming tens of thousands of lives.
With a renewal in deadly violence affecting both Israelis and Palestinians in recent days, Francis called for a “resumption of dialogue, in a climate of trust and reciprocal respect, between Israelis and Palestinians, so that peace may reign in the Holy City and in the entire region,’’ a reference to Jerusalem.
But Francis also noted progress on some fronts.
“Let us rejoice at the concrete signs of hope that reach us from so many countries, beginning with those that offers assistance and welcome to all fleeing war and poverty,” he said, without naming any particular nations.
How to care for asylum-seekers, migrants and refugees, and whether to allow them entrance, is a raging political and social debate in much of Europe, as well as in the United States and elsewhere.
The bloody conflicts cited by Francis contrasted with a riot of bright colors lent by orange-red tulips, yellow sprays of forsythia and daffodils, hyacinths and other colorful seasonal flowers that decorated St. Peter’s Square. The blooms were trucked in from the Netherlands and set up in planters to decorate the Vatican square.
Some 45,000 people had gathered by the start of the mid-morning Mass, according to Vatican security services, but the crowd swelled to some 100,00 ahead of the noon appointment for the pontiff’s speech from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica overlooking the square.
A canopy on the edge of steps on the square sheltered the pontiff, who was back in the public eye 12 hours after an Easter vigil ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica the night before.
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