Global News Podcast - Pope Leo: 'world ravaged by handful of tyrants'

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

In unusually forceful political remarks, Pope Leo has said the world is "being ravaged by a handful of tyrants". Addressing a crowd during his visit to a region of Cameroon affected by a separatist insurgency, the head of the Roman Catholic Church condemned the people who -- he said -- manipulated "the very name of God" for their own gain. Also: a Lebanese official has told the BBC that President Joseph Aoun is not planning to speak to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu - despite earlier suggestions from President Trump and Israeli officials. The outspoken South African opposition politician, Julius Malema, is sentenced to five years in prison for weapons offences. At least 17 people die in Ukraine following a massive Russian drone and missile attack. France looks to ban under-16s from using social media platforms, following Australia's lead. A study finds that communication between sperm whales closely parallels human language. And two rare paintings by the French Impressionist, Claude Monet, are sold at auction in Paris for a total of nearly $20m. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson and at 14 hours GMT on the 16th of April. These are our main stories. Pope Leo has spoken out against what he called a handful of tyrants ravaging the world days after being criticised by Donald Trump. A Lebanese official has told the BBC that President Joseph Aoun is not planning to speak with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, despite earlier suggestions from President Trump and Israeli officials.

Ukraine says Russia has attacked cities across the country with hundreds of drones and missiles, killing at least 17 people. Also in this podcast, the South African opposition leader Julius Malema is sentenced to five years in jail for firing a weapon at a political rally. And at a Paris art auction, two long unseen monies are sold for a to a total. total of nearly $20 million. It's a painting created while he was on a small boat. He had a studio boat built and would travel up and down the sand and paint from his boat.

In unusually forceful political remarks, Pope Leo has said on his trip to Africa that the world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants. Addressing a crowd in a region of Cameroon affected by a separatist insurgency, the head of the Catholic Church condemned the people. who, he said, manipulated the very name of God for their own gain. The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is often not enough to rebuild. They turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation,

yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found. The extraordinary comments come just days after a high-profile spat with President Trump, who posted a lengthy attack on the Pope, a vocal critic of the U.S. and Israel's war against Iran. Mr. Trump said that Pope Leo was terrible for foreign policy in a long truth social post, later telling reporters he was not a big fan of someone who doesn't be. believe we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world. My colleague Christian Fraser has been speaking to our global religion correspondent, Lebo DeSecco.

Pope Leo has just been backed up, as it were, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the third biggest Christian denomination of the world, Sarah Malawi, who said, I stand with my brother in Christ, his holiness, Pope Leo the 14th, in his courage to call for a kingdom of peace. Now, in the context of this, he was speaking in the capital of the northwest part of Cameroon, where there has been an insurgency for about 10 years, which has killed thousands and thousands of people. So he was addressing a service there, a crowd of people there, and you could say that, you know, some of the things he said related to that. But it comes after a week of back and forth with the Trump administration and Donald Trump himself,

we saw at the start of the week, lashing out at post. Hope Leo in an extraordinary fashion. Hope Leo has been very critical of war in general and spoken out quite vociferously about the war, the conflicts that we see at the moment. In his Good Friday address said that leaders that promote war or push war won't be blessed. And then we saw his Easter Sunday sermon used to call for peace again.

So this is kind of a ratcheting up of the tensions. We also had J.D. Vance, the vice president of the United States, a recent convert to Catholicism, saying that Pope Leo should be careful when it comes to speaking about doctrine. Yeah, careful about his theology. Yeah. Quite extraordinary advice for a politician to give the Pope. What was interesting about the juxtaposition of Pete Hegseth talking about the war in the last hour was that he was giving us this sermon or recounting his sermon from,

church on Sunday, which he'd taken from the book of Mark, at the very time that the Pope was warning leaders should stop using religious language to justify their wars. And this is really the problem that a lot of Catholics in the United States have been pointing to, that they're invoking God to justify their actions. Yeah, I think with Pete Hexed, Pete Hexeth is actually not a Catholic. He's an evangelical Christian, or that's the church that he would, or the denomination that he falls under. But I think there is a broader issue of the use of religious symbolism, religious language, in talking about the war by the Trump administration, which for many Christians, Catholics and Christians more widely,

is really antipical to the teachings of the Bible. So I think it being used in this way is quite difficult for a lot of Christians. Lebo de Sacco. A permanent end to the United States and Israel's war against Iraq. hangs in part on stopping the fighting in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, the armed group supported by Tehran. Following the breakdown of U.S.-Iran talks in Pakistan at the weekend, President Trump claimed that the leaders of Israel and Lebanon would speak on Thursday.

A minister in Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet then said that Israel's prime minister would speak with Joseph Aune. But Brayrout warned that President Aune was not planning to speak with Mr. Netanyahu, that Mr. Aune wants a ceasefire before the two leaders can talk. Israel is still bombing southern Lebanon. A security official in Lebanon has said that an airstrike has destroyed beyond repair the last bridge over the Lattani River that links the south with the rest of the country. Nick Beek has the latest from Jerusalem.

Strikes on bridges and other sort of infrastructure, critical apparatus in a country, can amount to a war crime. The Israeli military are saying that these bridges, and we hear that this is the last of them to be destroyed, linking the south from the north, that these bridges have been used as a really critical artery by Hezbollah to bring fighters, to bring weaponry to different positions on the battlefield. So that is the Israeli justification for continuing these strikes. And of course, it's part of this wider picture, airstrikes as well as an operation on the ground. I was up in the north of Israel yesterday, and I could hear the artillery fire. That was constant throughout the day, and that was a sound that reminded us once more

that the Israelis are continuing to strike southern Lebanon. I should say that for the past 48 hours or so, there have been sort of rumours swirling of a possible ceasefire. President Trump in his post was adamant that this conversation would take place. There was no suggestion that it may or may not. He was saying, yes, it would happen and was giving the indication that this would be an historic conversation that takes place. As you say, on the Lebanese side, they have been saying to the Reuters News Agency initially, and now to the BBC, they've made clear that the president has

no intention and no scheduled meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel any time soon. So clearly there's a lot going on here. There's a lot of briefings. Nick Beak. And the destruction of the bridge Nick mentioned, if confirmed, as part of Israel's stated aim to make southern Lebanon a security buffer zone to stop Hezbollah, you using the area to launch rockets into northern Israel, but human rights activists have accused Israel of making southern Lebanon uninhabitable. BBC Verify has been analysing satellite images and videos

which show that the Israeli army has levelled villages and towns by demolishing homes and buildings there, more than 1,400 in six weeks of war, according to our correspondent Merlin Thomas. We found vast demolitions and destruction across several villages in southern Lebanon. And we've done that by looking at satellite imagery and also looking at verified videos.

Now, the true scale of the devastation is likely much higher because we've got a very small snapshot and we focused on seven villages and towns because that's what we can see on available satellite imagery. And when you look at those images, what you're seeing is these hilltop towns and villages, normally kind of overlooking sweeping green valleys. Now on satellite imagery,

they're dusty and grey, and that's because of all the rubble and debris left over from these Israeli demolitions. And these are controlled explosions that are planted by Israeli troops as they are making their way through southern Lebanon as part of their ground offensive. What is Israel's policy here? So the Israeli military and Israel have said that they are hoping to create a buffer zone, essentially a security zone. And the defence minister has said he wants to do this all the way up to the Latani River. Now, that area encompasses about 10% of Lebanon's entire country.

Now, the Israeli military have ordered people to evacuate from these border villages and these towns and move north. But humanitarian organizations like the UN's humanitarian agency have said, you know, this is causing vast displacement where people are having to move north. It's worth saying that the Israeli government themselves have been very clear that they're doing this as part of what they call a model. model in Gaza as part of its campaign against Hezbollah. So the defence minister has ordered the acceleration of the destruction of Lebanese homes. So they've been very clear and open about this. Yeah, you mentioned Gaza. The pictures are like those pictures of Gaza, aren't they? They are. And when you watch the videos themselves, they look very similar to what you're seeing. Well, what we have seen in Gaza previously, they're large areas, many, many buildings

at once exploding. And then leaving behind its wake. just rubble and the buildings themselves have been leveled to the ground. And we've taken our findings to legal experts and they've said that this is a war crime because the destruction of property without military necessity and they say some of these things don't appear to fulfil that category is prohibited by international law. In this case they're saying that it does. Another expert also says this appears to be a form of cleansing of what are sheer villages and communities. And just to be clear, Hezbollah is a Shia Muslim group. And the southern Lebanese population,

most of them are Shia Muslims and there are Christian communities there too. But legal experts who've looked at our findings have said, actually, this shows a pattern of people trying to force these populations north. What are the Israelis saying? The Israeli military says it operates in accordance with the law of armed conflict and it doesn't destroy property unless there's a military imperative. And they've also said that Hezbollah has embedded itself within civilian areas in the region. Merlin Thomas from BBC Verify. And we will have more on this on our YouTube channel.

Search for BBC News on YouTube. And you'll find Global News Podcast in the podcast section. There's a new story available every weekday. Julius Smalaima, the outspoken South African opposition politician, has been sentenced to five years in prison for weapons offences. His conviction dates back to 2018 when a video emerged showing the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, EFF, using a semi-automatic rifle to fire several shots into the air during a political rally. Ahead of the sentencing, thousands of his supporters gathered outside the court in the southern city of East London.

I heard more about the case from our correspondent Pumza Falani, who was at the courthouse. Well, one of the things that persuaded the magistrate that she needs to hands down a sentence that is seen to be showing that she took this matter quite seriously is that one, she mentioned that it is unlikely that the incident happened unplanned. So she took into account that it needed to have been planned that Julius Malema knew he was going to be at a stadium where thousands of people were gathered and in that setting would have decided to take this firearm and fire it within that. and in that moment endangering many lives. She also mentioned that although she has tried him as an individual, it is something worth noting that he is the leader of a political party. He is somebody who is respected by many thousands of young people within his party, but also people that support his ideals politically and that it is important for them to know

that the behavior that he exhibited at the stadium on that day should not be left unchallenged. And this, of course, means that he can't stand in elections. Well, it could hurt his political prospects, certainly. But at the moment, what his legal team is trying to do is they have begun a process where they are petitioning the court for permission to appeal, not just the conviction itself, but the sentence. They're hoping that a separate court, the Supreme Court of Appeal, will come to different findings, which would then nullify today's five-year term. In fact, so in a few hours, we're hoping to hear from the magistrates if the legal teams are allowed to go through that process. Julius himself has said that he intends to take this as far as the constitutional court, which effectively would put a pause on things if that process is allowed. But if not, yes, then jail time is certainly on the cards for him.

He's a very divisive figure, but he has a lot of supporters, doesn't he? He absolutely has a lot of supporters just here in Islam. The crowds are mixed. We're seeing young people and elderly people alike, brandishing party t-shirts, saying that they believe his being unfetterly targeted. But also, he represents a very real challenge here in South Africa, and that is a challenge of inequality. A lot of people believe that although racial segregation ended years ago, economic inequality still persists. And they're saying that they believe that the parties that have been in power until now have done very little to address that. And so his party has a huge.

following amongst those people that feel disgruntled at the slow pace of balancing things out economically. Pumza Falani at the courthouse in East London, South Africa. Two rare paintings by the French Impressionist Claude Monet have gone under the hammer in Paris today. They've sold for a total of just under $20 million. Rebecca Wood reports. The two artworks were painted 18 years apart, yet close in-local.

In the spring of 1883, Claude Monet moved to the village of Givigny in northern France. It was here he'd spend the final four decades of his life and continue his love affair with the River Sen. The first painting is of a wooded island and its reflection, painted in the year that he moved. Previously only known through a black and white photograph, the colours are now clear for all to see with strokes of greens and blues. Orly van der Vord is vice-president of Sotheby's France.

It's a painting created while he was on a small boat. He had a studio boat built and would travel up and down the seine and paint from his boat. That is why the painting has a very immersive quality. We really are at water level. By the second painting in 2001, that customized boat was out and the motor car was in. Monet used it to explore more of the region. This artwork depicts the village of Vittoy as seen from across the seine. His Sotheby's art expert Etienne Helman.

Monnet painted 15 versions of VIII. Viteux in 1901. And our painting is one of the early depictions he would have done in spring. We see in the painting the value of the colours become autonomous. They're based in reality, but there's a lot of leeway. We're here really in the mature phase of Mune's style, further and early developer of abstract art. And it makes Viteau so important as it inscribed itself in the series paintings of this period. French Impressionism has enduring appeal in the art world, and both these paintings have been out of public view for decades. But the joint total of nearly $20 million doesn't beat the record for one of Monet's pieces.

That was over $100 million in 2019 for a painting from his famous Haystack series. Rebecca Wood. Still to come in this podcast. They have air sacks in their noses and they move the air between the air sacs over structures that are similar to our vocal call. but really very different. Their communication is richer in content than we'd perhaps realise. New research suggests that the clicking noises sperm whales make when they're communicating with each other

have a complexity similar to human language. This is the Global News podcast. At least 17 people are now known to have died in Ukraine following a massive Russian drone and missile attack overnight on Wednesday. Dozens more were injured. The southern port city of Edessa was among the hardest hit with at least nine fatalities. Several regions were left without electricity. Photos posted online from Kiev showed fires burning out of control from falling debris.

A local resident said it was a difficult time. It's just so scary, that's all. I fear for our country and for everything we have. I feel so sorry for the children. So many people died today. Children died. It's so sad. President Zelensky has led a minute's silence for the victims.

Our correspondent Sarah Rainsford is in the Ukrainian capital. It was a very bad night for Ukraine, one of the worst in terms of fatalises, for months here. So we were woken around about 2.30 in the morning with the air raid sirens and then started to hear the explosions here in Kiev. The authorities have said that there were more than 700 missiles and drones launched by Russia overnight. They shot a lot of them down. But of course, when things get shot down, the fragments drop on buildings below and also some of those missiles and drones hit their targets,

or hit, I should say, because one of the targets in inverted commas was a building. We saw images of a drone slamming right into the side of a residential blocker flats here in Kiev. A lot of fatalities. So four people killed here in the capital, including a 12-year-old boy, nine people killed in Odessa, the port city in the south, and several people killed in Nipro as well in the southeast of of Ukraine. All this comes as President Zelensky has just signed a defense deal with Saudi Arabia. Ukraine's expertise in the drone industry really is showing its effects now, isn't it? Ukraine has certainly been pitching itself as a supplier of drones to countries in the Gulf,

in the Middle East, also across Europe. I think there's a slight shift of tone here, but again, you know, that gets battered every time there's an attack like this. Yes, because it's specifically appealing to Europe for air defence systems. Are those arguments going to work? Well, Europe is helping in vast amounts, I mean, in terms of huge amounts of financial support and military support. But the problem is that now Europe has to buy missiles from the United States that the United States used to give to Ukraine.

So it's become much more expensive to support Ukraine. And the supply of the particular air defence missiles that Ukraine needs for the Patriot systems, here, they are in short supply because so many are being used in the Middle East. So Ukraine is worried. President Zelensky has talked multiple times about how there is a shortage, almost a critical shortage of air defence missiles, and you need those missiles to shoot down missiles that can't be done with drones. Briefly, any significant peace talks news? No, in the last few days, President Zenskyy has been saying that the US envoy, Steve Wittkov and Jared Kushner, have been invited to come to Kiev. They haven't been at all yet during this war, although they're to

supposed to be envoys between Ukraine and Moscow. The latest was, he said, they had agreed to come, but there's no date set. I would say it's a pretty vague agreement at best at the moment, but certainly people here do desperately want those talks to continue because they do want this war to end. Sarah Rainsford in Kiev. Policing young people's activity on social media has long been a major concern for parents, and Australia has led the way by banning under-16s from using the platforms last year. is also looking at passing its own law. And today, President Macron is hosting a video meeting of European leaders

to try to encourage others to do the same. I got more from our Paris correspondent, Hugh Schofield. President Macron is running the day up at a place called Vie de Cotteret, which is north of Paris, where he has opened a couple of years ago. The centre for the promotion of the French language is in the form of chateau there. He's up having a day with French school children promoting what he's calling national offline day to day. This, of course, in response to worries about declining reading habits among children. And on the same theme, he's hosting this meeting this afternoon from there

with European leaders, Ursula Mandelaan for the Commission, and also prime ministers from a number of countries who are, he wants to motivate and galvanise into action on this issue of a ban on social media for under 15-year-olds or 16-year-olds, it depends on the country. He wants to coordinate the European country's positions and get the European Commission also involved in something so that there's a Europe-wide action here while at the moment it's each country separately taking the initiative, France leading away, but several others also in a kind of pioneer group moving towards some kind of legislation on this issue. Yeah, because this is a big political issue in France and lawmakers are already at work.

Yes, I mean, not just here, of course, but across the world. I mean, you know, governments are looking at this with greater and greater attention because of all the evidence, as we've reported endlessly, about damage to youngsters and their attention spans and so on. France is probably, yes, it's the leading country in Europe, edging this way. It hopes to have the law on the books by the end of the summer so that at the start of the next school year in September, it will be impossible for, well, illegal. anyway for children under 16 to have access to certain social media.

The law is very complicated and it's been held up in Parliament, but I mean that's the aim and it's very much a project that President Macron holds dear. Yeah, and the EU has announced its own verification app too. Yeah, I mean, this links in. The announcement was made yesterday. Evidently, part of this has to be some way of checking access to social media. so there has to be a verifiable and reliable and safe form of doing that. The European Commission quite separately, but now running on the same track

as has developed this app, originally aimed, of course, at stopping minors, people under 18, getting onto pornography and gambling websites, a way of checking that they are 18 or over. And that same idea would be applicable if once this goes ahead on the issue of social media for under 16-year-olds. It has to be said that, you know, this is an added pain. for everyone, because everyone will have to do this to show that they're over 18, but it is deemed important enough that it will go ahead. Hughes Schofield in Paris. Now to one of the most extraordinary creatures in our oceans.

You're listening to the sound of a sperm whale there. They're impressive in many ways. They boast the biggest brain of any animal on earth with heads that are close to one third of their bodies. They're also the largest toothed predator on the planet. planet. They can hold their breath for two hours and make the loudest sound of any creature, emitting clicks that reach 230 decibels. These clicks are emitted in short sequences called codus. Now, new research suggests these coders bear a remarkable similarity to human language. The Cetacean Translation Initiative has found that sperm whales differentiate vowels

through either short or long clicks with tonal adjustments in a pattern that resembles Latin and Mandarin, among others. To hear more, Amal Rajan spoke to Professor John Copley, a marine biologist at the University of Southampton. What this new research shows is that in addition to being able to encode information in the series of clicks, a bit like Morse code, whether you've got a dot or a dash, actually within the dot or the dash itself, there's another way of encoding information. You can actually have something that differs in tone, differs more in length and so on,

in the overall frequency of each individual sound. So it shows us that their communication is richer in content than we'd perhaps realized. It's absolutely phenomenal how they make this sound because it's very, very different to how we are making sounds talking right now. So what they have to do, of course, is make these sounds while they are underwater holding their breath. if you close your mouth and you pinch off your nose and you try and hum, you don't hum for very long

because there's nowhere for the air to go as it passes over your vocal cords from your lungs. So sperm whales make the sounds actually in their noses and they have air sacks in their noses and they move the air between the air sacs over structures that are similar to our vocal cords, but really very different. They call sonic lips and they're actually in their noses. so they're producing the sounds in very different way to us. And that sound has to reach very, distances, I mean, very high volumes, but distances very, very far away. But it does it, having migrated or gone through spermacelli, which is about a third of their

bodies, isn't it? That's right. And that's also a material that they use for buoyancy during their dive. So that's something that fills up a large volume in their head. And it's a waxy-like substance. And it changes from a solid to a liquid during a dive. And that changes its volume. and that therefore either helps them to sink or to float without having to expend so much energy

on swimming. So they've got that in their heads as well. When they're talking to each other, they're usually very close, often kind of pressing their heads up against each other to fire these clicks between individuals. What hope there's always a danger that we anthropomorphies that we imagine them sort of conducting human language and human sentiment. What hope do we have of ever understanding the meaning behind their clicks as well as the volume of them? Well, that's a really big question. Let's imagine if we could decode the equivalent of a word or a couple of words,

some sort of sound that conveys meaning. Even then, how far could we be from understanding any kind of communication, any kind of conversation? Because it might be that they communicate entirely through metaphor, through cultural reference. So who knows? John Copley. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at global podcast at BBC.co.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. And don't forget our sister podcast, the global story, which goes in-depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News podcast was mixed by Lewis Griffin, and the producers were Adrian White and Muzaffa Shakir. The editor is Karen. Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time, goodbye.