The UN says al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families

DAMASCUS (AP) — The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.

Associated Press
February 17, 2026

DAMASCUS (AP) — The U.N. refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Islamic State group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.

Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”

“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.

He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”

The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.

There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.

The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.

Forces of Syria’s central government captured the al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.

Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the U.S.

The U.S. military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.

Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.

The grim satisfaction of AI doomsaying

 Opinion

The grim satisfaction of AI doomsaying

(Sightings) — Like depictions of the horrors of war may ennoble it, dire warnings about the AI future only make the technology seem inevitable.

(Photo by Simon Hurry/Unsplash/Creative Commons)

Russell P. Johnson

February 20, 2026

(Sightings) — In the early 1960s, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke published a short story in Playboy titled “Dial F for Frankenstein.” In the story, set in the not-too-distant future of 1975, an automated global network gets complex enough that individual phones start to act like neurons in a brain, and the system achieves consciousness.

One researcher asks, “‘What would this supermind actually do? Would it be friendly — hostile — indifferent?” Another replies “with a certain grim satisfaction” that like a newborn baby, the artificial intelligence will break things. This prediction quickly comes true as planes crash, pipes explode, and missiles are launched. The story ends with the extinction of the human race.

Years later, Tim Berners-Lee credited “Dial F for Frankenstein” for inspiring him to create the internet.

That may seem strange, but the Venn diagram of people who are worried that smarter technology will destroy us all and people who are developing smarter technology has more overlap than you might expect.

In their new book “The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want,” Emily Bender and Alex Hanna discuss the trend of researchers worrying publicly about AI causing human extinction. “Strangely enough,” they write, “despite these visions, nearly all AI Doomers think that AI development is a net good. Many of them have built their careers off the theorization, testing, development, and deployment of AI systems.”

Looking at the signatures on public statements about AI risk, Bender and Hanna note that some signatories are genuinely concerned, but “for some of them, it’s not really about trying to save humanity, but rather a running of the con: the supposed danger of the systems is a splashy way to hype their power, with the goal of scoring big investments in their own AI ventures (like [Elon] Musk and [Sam] Altman) or funding for their own research centers (like [Malo] Bourgon).” The people most vocal about the dangers of AI research tend to be the ones most interested in pursuing that research, or as Bender and Hanna put it, “Scratch a Doomer and find a Booster.”

(Photo by Lucas Andrade/Pexels/Creative Commons)

Adam Becker makes a similar point in a recent article in The Atlantic. “Those who predict that superintelligence will destroy humanity serve the same interests as those who believe that it will solve all of our problems,” writes Becker. Technology experts who invoke apocalyptic AI scenarios like “WarGames” (1983), “Terminator” (1984), or “The Matrix” (1999) are usually “grifters,” but even those who are sincere ironically feed into the same pro-AI sentiment they are trying to challenge.

A book titled “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All” may seem like an unambiguous warning against developing Artificial General Intelligence, but for Becker the book plays into the same “fantasy of oversimplified technological salvation” that tech CEOs are preaching. That book’s co-author may be a “prophet of doom,” but like the biblical prophet Jonah, predicting people’s destruction only makes them more devoted.

A recent Super Bowl commercial continues this unsettling trend. In it, actor Chris Hemsworth expresses a worry that his Alexa+ AI technology will murder him. Viewers then see Alexa+ killing Hemsworth in a variety of ways, before being reminded in the closing seconds that this is a commercial for Alexa+. The producers of this technology think you’ll be more inclined to purchase it after you watch it kill Thor four times.

We hear an echo of François Truffaut’s remark that anti-war movies ironically glorify war. Depictions of the horrors of war may be intended as cautionary tales, but they ennoble war and wrap it in tragic necessity. Likewise, visions of AI apocalypses make the technology seem powerful and inevitable. Rather than convincing people to avoid developing “superhuman” AI, some people are driven to ensure this technology ends up in the right hands (their own).

Like Becker, who invokes the prophetic tradition, Bender and Hanna use religious language to describe AI predictions. They explain that some techno-optimists “deify AI” and that extinction scenarios make AI seem “godlike.”

This curious phenomenon of pro-AI doomsaying shares similarities with religious predictions of the end times. For some believers, speculating about the end of the world is actually reassuring, because it testifies to God’s power in the here and now. Rather than making people feel powerless, people feel empowered because they are on the side of the one who is capable of such destruction.

As the philosopher Jerry L. Walls has written, some Christian dispensationalists respond “with a certain grim satisfaction” to indications that their apocalyptic predictions are coming true. Coincidentally, perhaps, Clarke used the exact same phrase in “Dial F for Frankenstein.”

In both religious apocalypticism and AI doomsaying, there tends to be an “if” clause — at least some of us will be spared if we are faithful, or if we align AI with human values. Those who prophesy destruction encourage others to repent, while those who speculate about AI apocalypse encourage developers to factor the “alignment problem” into their software. Fears of human extinction don’t really seem to make AI “Boosters” reticent to develop Artificial General Intelligence; rather, these fears convince them that even more money and effort should be expended to make sure the AGI we will inevitably create will not turn us all into paperclips.

The term “apocalypse” derives from Greek words that mean “uncovering.” In many religious contexts, sci-fi stories, and technological prognostications, what sounds like a prediction of the future is actually an attempt to express something true but hidden about the present. For some, the prospect of an AI causing human extinction uncovers the truth that the desire for profit and discovery are often alienated from considerations of the well-being of humanity. But for the AI “Boosters” and those who buy into the hype, these apocalyptic scenarios uncover the truth that AI technology is powerful and worth investing in. To paraphrase Job 13 — though it slays us, we will trust in it.

What, then, can be done?

Bender and Hanna recommend that we pay no attention either to utopian visions of AI future or dystopian visions of AI apocalypse. Rather, we should pay attention to real distributions of power in the present. The AI technology we already have is affecting the environment, employment, and (mis)information; we ought to focus on that rather than prognosticating about what could happen if we eventually develop superintelligent software. Just as the best eschatological reflection helps people act responsibly in the present, the best moral reflection on AI helps people respond to the current needs of other humans.

(Russell P. Johnson is associate director of the undergraduate religious studies program at the University of Chicago Divinity School. A version of this article first appeared on Sightings, a publication of the divinity school’s Marty Martin Center. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

Opinion

Sacred marches and sacred music in a time of empire

(RNS) — Bad Bunny's joyful Super Bowl halftime show, a group of monks walking hundreds of miles for peace, protesters singing in the streets.

Bad Bunny performs during halftime of the NFL Super Bowl 60 football game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Kaitlin Curtice
February 20, 2026
RNS


(RNS) — A combination of recent events has illuminated for me, once again, the power of sacred resistance in the face of cruelty and oppression. Sacred resistance is more than just protest, more than social media posting, more even than advocacy. Sacred resistance can include those things, but it is also embodied, it is done in community, it is aspirational in its call to joy, to the celebration of humanity, to justice. It embraces the prophetic power of art — in music, in poetry, in paintings, in film — alongside the strength of a crowd with a common purpose. Sacred resistance is subversive, but it is wholly human.

I have witnessed this sacred resistance in Bad Bunny’s defiantly joyful Super Bowl halftime show, in a group of monks walking hundreds of miles for peace, in protesters singing in the streets and in our very homes as we care for one another in a time of immense violence.

Each offers an example of how we can resist the status quo of hate, greed, colonialism, racism, xenophobia and sexism — by showing up with joy, movement, poetry, long walks, music, online and in-person presence and by holding space with one another to rest and to heal along the way.

During Bad Bunny’s halftime show — itself a stunning tribute to Puerto Rico — Ricky Martin sang the lyrics to “Lo que le paso a Hawaii,” a story of survival, grief and dreams living on despite colonialism.

Hawa’ii and Boricua, what we call Puerto Rico today, share a history of brutal colonialism. Puerto Rico has lived under colonial rule since 1493, when Columbus arrive on Taíno land. Today, the island holds the status of “territory” in the United States, with little agency and no congressional representation. The United States overthrew the monarchy of Hawa’ii in 1893, devastating the Native Hawaiian population and culture, which continues today through an extravagant and extractive tourist industry.

A few of the lyrics in Ricky Martin’s song spoke to the struggles in both Puerto Rico and Hawa’ii:

Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa (They want to take away the river and also the beach)

Quieren al barrio mío y que abuelita se vaya (They want my neighborhood and they want grandma to leave)

Que no quiero que hagan contigo lo que le pasó a Hawái (I don’t want them to do to you what they did to Hawa’ii)

Benito Ocasio’s halftime show was about more than music; it was a celebration of Puerto Rican culture and community, a celebration of the whole of the American continents, looking to the future while also speaking the truth about the past and about the present that we find ourselves in.

Buddhist monks participating in the “Walk For Peace” are seen with their dog, Aloka, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026, in Saluda, S.C. (AP Photo/Allison Joyce)

And then there was a group of Vietnamese Buddhist monks, nuns and their dog, Aloka, who walked from Texas to Washington, D.C., for peace, marching on bruised feet because they believed the world needed to bear witness not just to violence but to the power of spiritually grounded practices. Every time I saw the monks in a reel on Instagram or in the news, I was reminded of the power we hold in our very bodies — that our spiritual life, our commitment to justice and care in the world, happens not just through prayer but through action rooted in kinship and belonging. When we begin to understand the threads of community that build webs of resistance in the world, we can prepare ourselves for whatever is next.

I was recently with an elder who is the tribal chairman of the Grand River Band of Ottawa Indians, and he talked to me about The Long Walk, a march organized by the American Indian Movement in the 1970s from Alcatraz to Washington, D.C., over five months. They gathered together with their allies who joined them along the way to protest the United States government’s broken treaty promises, especially around land sovereignty and water rights. What began with around 3,000 people ended in more than 30,000, speaking to the power of building community through movement. The march was a political statement, but, like the monks’ walk, it was also a spiritual one. Along the way they passed a peace pipe, they danced, sang and educated the masses on Indigenous rights and care for the earth.

And now, Indigenous peoples dance in the streets of Minneapolis, holding vigil, praying and caring for their community through sacred resistance. Earlier this month, a group of Indigenous peoples led by Migizi Spears of the Red Lake Nation set up a prayer camp in front of the Whipple building, a building tied to the oppression of the Dakota and Ho-Chunk people, to protest the violence and wrongful detention of people by ICE. They held vigil, prayed, sang and named the truth of history so that it won’t be repeated. It was a form of sacred protest and a vision for who we should be in this time.

Indigenous people perform during a memorial honoring Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, who were both recently fatally shot by federal agents, on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

In an era in which Donald Trump is president, the necessity of resistance is visceral and clear. But how do we show up to this moment in ways that will create change?

Maybe it begins with looking up the lyrics to a song in Spanish or learning about the history of places like Puerto Rico, Cuba or Hawa’ii, histories that will make clear how borders are a colonial construct. We learned this in Bad Bunny’s halftime show, and as a lesson that many Indigenous people have taught again and again. Constructed borders keep us from recognizing the humanity present in those beyond our colonial boundaries and markers.

Listen to the stories of the oppressed. Read books and celebrate art created by those on the margins, whose stories don’t often get told. When we diversify the stories we take in, especially during a time when those stories are being suppressed, we expand our perspective and grow our community.

Grieve what America isn’t — and never has been. Many people are afraid to grieve the loss of an image of America they deeply wanted to be true. We have to come to terms with the foundational violence of this country: the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Black people. Those violences did not simply end; they are perpetuated through racist policing strategies, discriminatory housing and lending practices, the extraction of natural resources from Indigenous lands. Grief is essential in resistance work.

But you don’t have to do it alone. Show up to a community meeting, to a vigil, to a march, get involved in resistance art (like this Philadelphia art community knitting anti-ice hats once a week). Our resistance movements fall apart if they aren’t sustained by communal care and joy.

One of my favorite elders, Choctaw teacher Steven Charleston, writes in his book “Ladder to the Light”:

“When we share our questions together, we become our own answer. We discover there is no one right way to do everything. We understand that no single plan will encompass the way forward. If we seek to bring light into darkness, then we must rely on the wisdom of us all.”

May we ask the questions we need to ask, and may we realize we are also capable of the answer.

(Kaitlin B. Curtice is an award-winning author and poet. She is the author of several books, including “Native: Identity, Belonging and Rediscovering God” and “Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day.” She is also the director of the Aki Institute. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

'The divine will come': On Lord Shiva's night, Hindus channel deity's energy at the heart of creation

(RNS) — Mahashivratri, which means “the Great Night of Shiva” in Sanskrit, takes place as Lord Shiva's cosmic energies are said to be at their highest.

People attend a Mahashivratri celebration, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026, in New York. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

Richa Karmarkar
February 16, 2026
RNS

NEW YORK (RNS) — Manirag Reddy Gaddam, a 30-year-old data analyst from Hoboken, New Jersey, said he had never anticipated his sudden turn to the Hindu faith in his 20s. Equally unexpected, he said, was pulling an all-nighter last year as he celebrated Mahashivratri, the daylong Hindu holiday dedicated to principle deity Lord Shiva.

“I was planning to exit at 2 a.m.,” said Reddy Gaddam, “but the air was so electric that I just stayed. By the time I went home, it was 8 a.m. It was crazy.”

This year’s celebration of the holiday, which fell on Sunday (Feb. 15) and ended early Monday, was no less of an exertion. “Today, I’m fasting as well, like I haven’t eaten anything today, I didn’t drink anything,” said Reddy Gaddam. “I don’t know how I’m surviving, but I have a lot of energy.”

From a rented event space in New York with nearly 300 others, Reddy Gaddam watched a Mahashivratri celebration livestreamed by the Isha Yoga Center in southern India. The celebration, hosted by the renowned guru and yoga teacher Sadhguru, drew an estimated 140 million followers around the world, who chanted, meditated and danced in remote locations for 12 hours.

Manirag Reddy Gaddam. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

Mahashivratri, which means “the Great Night of Shiva” in Sanskrit, takes place as Lord Shiva’s cosmic energies are said to be at their highest. Falling as the new moon of the lunar month of Phalguna is dark in the sky, the festival is traditionally marked by staying awake for 12 or 24 hours, as devotees deepen connection with themselves and Lord Shiva. Sometimes the 12 hours are spent in meditation, or in “marathons” of devotional singing to the deity of destruction and transformation.

“When you sit with your spine straight, there’s an upsurge of energy,” said Reddy Gaddam. “When we’re doing this whole meditation together, it is magnetic, like you can feel that energy. I was just feeling ecstatic. We kept dancing the whole night, we sat down for 30 minutes, and then we just kept dancing up until morning. We felt the presence of Adiyogi,” he said, using an alternative name for Shiva that refers to the god as the first ascetic yogi, from which all yogic wisdom arose.

Mahashivratri also marks the divine marriage of Shiva and the goddess Parvati, the embodiment of feminine energy, which is called Shakti. Devotees of Shiva, called Shaivites, worship both the masculine Shiva and feminine Shakti together as Paramashiva.

RELATED: The worship of Shiva, Hinduism’s ‘inconceivable’ deity, finds a home in the tech sector

In Los Angeles, Tripurasundari, an initiate of a Shaivite Hindu community, Kailasa USA, has been preparing for Mahashivratri for months. On the biggest night of the year for the “Hindu micro-nation,” as the group calls itself, almost 100 devotees offered milk, ghee, flowers and fruits to the Shiva Lingam — the stone obelisk that represents Shiva in his transcendent form.

Swami Nithyananda, himself considered an incarnation of Paramashiva, the union of feminine and masculine Shakti, oversees Kailasa’s temple, which is home to the largest Shiva Lingam in North America.

“It’s really easy to stay up all night,” said Tripurasundari, a California native. “You have so much bhakti because there’s so much energy,” she said, using the Sanskrit word for love of the divine. “And of course, a lot of us wake up and we do puja (ritual worship) and we do yoga, and we meditate, and our kundalinis (primal energies) are awakened. There’s so many aspects of that energy staying alive within us.”

According to many Shaivites, the ultimate goal of enlightenment in “Paramashiva’s economy” can come from connection with Shiva — the primordial energy which is not only a god, but a representation of all metaphysical existence. “So much healing can happen when we just realize that we are consciousness, that we are Shiva, and this is how we’re empowered, and how Swamiji empowers us,” she said.

People in New York City watch a Mahashivratri celebration livestreamed by the Isha Yoga Center in southern India, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

But like interpretations of Lord Shiva, Mahashivratri celebrations are diverse. Rishik Dhar, the head of the online educational community Shaivite.org, practices Kashmir Shaivism, a largely philosophical approach to Hindu life that overlaps with science and astronomy. These Kashmiri Pandits, as these devotees are called, celebrate the day of Shiva and Parvati by indulging in a feast, a “tantric” way of marking the holiday that, Dhar said, “scandalized” the many Hindus who either fast or refrain from eating meat on the day.

Despite the “surface level” differences, he said, “the philosophical idea or ideology is more similar than different. Paramashiva is that absolute consciousness of which everything else emerges, and what we are praying for is that oneness with that absolute consciousness.”

On Mahashivratri, Hindus celebrate the cosmic coming together of Shiva and Shakti, said Dhar. What’s important across many paths of devotion, is that “we worship and ask for that same realization to occur in us as well. It is the same idea that we all want to realize that we are just an extension of Shiva, basically.”

Yogiraj Utkarsh, CEO of the World Yoga Federation, which certifies yoga instructors and was founded by the modern Indian Swami Vidyanand, held his first-ever 24-hour kirtan, or devotional sing, on Sunday. A broad range of yoga teachers, Hindu and non-Hindu, celebrated at a yoga studio near Los Angeles with 30 musical artists, among them the Grammy-nominated kirtan singer and producer Dave Stringer.

Utkarsh said some people he invited had wondered if anyone would be willing to come sing and dance for 24 hours straight.

“But I said, the Divine will come,” he said. “That is enough for me. The real kirtan, you don’t do for an audience, you do for the Divine. And if you do with that intention, there is no force on the earth that can prevent the Divine from coming.”

RELATED: Smoke and Shiva: Young Hindus observe deity’s ‘great night’ as a high holiday

THE EPSTEIN CLASS

Epstein files reveal ties to Catholic conservatives' anti-Francis campaign

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — The newly released Epstein files show that Jeffrey Epstein and Steve Bannon discussed opposition to Pope Francis, including a move that Bannon claimed would ‘take down Francis.’

Former White House senior adviser Steve Bannon, second from left, in the East Room at the White House on April 12, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Claire Giangravé
February 11, 2026

RNS


VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Newly released files by the U.S. Department of Justice show that convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein and former Trump aide Steve Bannon discussed strategies to undermine Pope Francis, revealing how the Vatican was viewed as a geopolitical pressure point by Epstein’s network of political and financial leaders.

In text messages between Bannon and Epstein from June 2019, Bannon seems to suggest that Epstein was an executive producer of a documentary film that never got made, based on a 2019 book by French journalist and researcher Frédéric Martel, “In the Closet of the Vatican.”

“Will take down Francis,” Bannon writes about the film. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU — come on brother.”

Martel’s book delves into the culture of secrecy and hypocrisy regarding homosexuality at the Vatican. When it was published, the book galvanized conservative outrage because it included claims stating that 80% of Vatican clergy are gay.
RELATED: Cardinal Cupich says feds stopped priests, demanded citizenship proof

Martel told Religion News Service that he had several meetings with Bannon, who told Martel that he “loved” the book. The two met in Paris, in the penthouse suite of the Hôtel Bristol, where Bannon first floated the idea of adapting the book into a film. “He told me that he would like to do a movie about it,” Martel said, adding that “he was very enthusiastic.”

Martel clarified that he never accepted Bannon’s offer and never received any payment from him, as his French publisher controlled the rights to the book. Martel said he had no contact with Epstein.


A text thread between Bannon and Epstein including reference to Pope Francis that was released as part of the larger collection of Epstein files. Screenshot

Bannon’s interest in Martel’s book was enough to lead U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke to cut ties with the Dignitatis Humanae Institute, a conservative Catholic organization that Burke felt had become too identified with Bannon. “I am not at all of the mind that the book should be made into a film,” Burke wrote in a letter dated June 25, 2019.

The correspondence between Epstein and Bannon took place at the height of concerted conservative efforts to oppose Francis, who had signaled his openness toward LGBTQ Catholics and divorced or remarried Catholics and who expressed concern for migrants and the environment in his public statements and written documents.

Overall, Francis had shifted the church’s tone from his immediate predecessors’ emphasis on enforcing doctrine, toward inclusion. The 2014-15 Synod on the Family, a meeting of Catholic bishops in Rome, broadened the church’s views on family life and ended with an apostolic exhortation that preached about “a church of mercy.” In its wake, conservative cardinals — including Burke — issued a challenge, known as a dubia, to Francis’ teaching.

The dissent reached its climax when the former papal representative to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, published a scathing public letter accusing Francis of covering up the abuse by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

“There’s a clear concerted campaign among a number of traditionalist figures and institutions to bring down Francis in the name of some sort of ‘purification,’ which culminates in the Viganò letter,” said Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh, who said the connections revealed in the Epstein files were an interesting new element. “What obviously is clear, though, is that they had formed an alliance of sorts.”

Emails between Bannon and Epstein dating to 2018 lament the Vatican’s push against xenophobia, racism and populism, as well as the Holy See’s relationship with China.

Epstein is often dismissive toward the papacy and Francis in the released correspondence. When Francis visited the U.S. in 2015, Epstein noted that the pope was staying near Epstein’s residence in New York. “I thought id invite him for a massage,” Epstein wrote in an email to his brother, Mark Epstein, followed by lewd remarks.

Jeffrey Epstein also seems to have had an interest in the Vatican’s finances. He was familiar with the book “Who Killed God’s Banker?: A 30 Year Investigation” by Edward Jay Epstein, detailing the financial structure of the Institute for Works of Religion, commonly referred to as the Vatican bank. In particular, the book comments on the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, after which its president, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging from a noose under London’s Blackfriars Bridge.

In an email to Epstein in August 2014 about blockchain and digital currency, the Italian cybersecurity researcher Vincenzo Iozzo pointed to “the Vatican and Monaco” as small sovereign states that could be “viable” grounds for experimentation. “You said you like great hacks — selling companies and/or big western countries a currency that doesn’t actually exist is probably the ultimate hack in the world,” Iozzo wrote.

At the time, Francis had launched a major effort to reform the Vatican’s troubled and often opaque finances and appointed Cardinal George Pell to lead the newly formed Secretariat for the Economy. Francis also closed thousands of suspect accounts by non-Vatican City citizens.

An FBI report included in the DOJ’s release includes a source who claims that an Italian cybersecurity figure described as “Epstein’s Hacker” may have held a Vatican City passport.

At Brazil's Carnival, the country's religions fight for respect on a global stage

(RNS) — Carnival, a spectacle celebrating African deities and Catholic saints alike, has become a battleground for religious groups in Brazil.

A performer from the Grande Rio samba school parades on a float during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Helen Teixeira
February 20, 2026
RNS


(RNS) — Rio de Janeiro’s lavish Carnival parades, which burst to life in the days before Lent begins, are famous for their colorful costumes, giant floats and the driving rhythm of samba that is a hallmark of Brazilian culture and a magnet for tourists from around the globe. Each parade is produced by one of Rio’s samba schools, which work year-round to prepare them, and each has its own “plot” — enredo in Brazilian Portuguese — that guides its aesthetic. Themes range from tributes to historical figures or artists to pop culture to social and political critique.

These parades all compete on craftsmanship, choreography, rhythmic precision, narrative coherence and the poetic quality of their original song lyrics. They are broadcast nationwide and make headlines around the world.

What is less known about the samba communities behind the parades is their Afro-Catholic religiosity — Afro-Brazilian spirituality that coexists with popular Catholicism: Each school has an orixá — an African deity and a catholic saint of devotion — and at the altars found in the rehearsal halls, the schools’ spiritual guides perform rituals and Masses.

“They are recreational organizations, but religion is present in their social life throughout the year,” said Lucas Bártolo, anthropologist and author of a study titled, “On the Altar of Samba: Religion in the World of Carnival.” “Both the worship of orixás and the devotion to Catholic saints organize the religious life of carnival groups and ground their symbolic dimension.”

In Brazil, as in other Latin American countries, the Catholicism of the Iberian Peninsula arrived with colonization. The church maintained strong links with the state, setting dates and festivals that structured the calendar. Carnival begins the Saturday before Ash Wednesday and ends on Shrove Tuesday, also known as Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras, before Lent’s 40 days of fasting start.

“It is a festive period, deeply religious, representing an opposition between Carnival and Lent, which is very strong in Iberian culture, and has also been appropriated by African-derived groups,” Bártolo said.

Performers from the Mocidade samba school parade on a float during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Monday, Feb. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Afro-Brazilian religions have interacted with Catholicism and Christian festivals since the Portuguese arrived, reinterpreting the colonial religion through their own practices and worldviews, even observing aspects of Lent.

“The origins of Carnival in Brazil are linked to enslaved Africans who were brought here and came together to create samba using percussion instruments,” Aydano André Motta, journalist, screenwriter, writer and Carnival researcher, told Religion News Service. “Samba gave rise to samba schools as community spaces in the neighborhoods where these people settled after abolition — predominantly low-income communities, known as favelas.



“Every samba school has always included a priest or priestess from Candomblé or Umbanda,” Motta added, referring to two dominant Afro-Brazilian religions. “The social dynamics of samba schools are guided by (their) rituals.”

Before official parade competitions began in the 1930s, and before state authorities, the media, wealthy classes, corporate sponsors and tourists became involved, the samba schools were confined mostly to homes in the Afro-Brazilian community.

The rhythms of Carnival are derived from the drumming that is central to communication and spirit invocation in Africa. “The instruments used in ritual spaces are the same as those in the school’s percussion section,” said Carlos Monteiro, a journalist and sociologist from the Federal Fluminense University.

Samba brought together the descendants and the percussion of Africans with distinct languages and cultures. “What the diaspora separated, cultural diasporic practice united,” Monteiro said.

FILE – Performers from the Mangueira samba school parade with a depiction of a crucifixion during Carnival celebrations at the Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

Of the two main branches of Afro-Brazilian traditions, Candomblé focuses on orixás, while Umbanda is more given to blending Catholic and Indigenous spirituality, religious mixing that emerged when, under slavery, African practices were forbidden. The orixás each have Catholic equivalents: “Oxum is syncretized with Our Lady of Conception, Oxóssi with Saint Sebastian, Xangô with Saint Peter, and more than any other, Ogum with Saint George. Ogum is the orixá of war and metals, and Saint George is the most popular saint in Rio, and therefore in the samba schools,” said Motta.

The Catholic Church’s relationship with Carnival and samba schools has historically involved periods of “absolute rejection and condemnation of public discourse, including attempts to prohibit and criminalize these practices,” according to Bártolo. In Rio, city laws were proposed to restrict or regulate Catholic symbols in parades, claiming they profaned sacred images, and schools have often had to modify images of Mary and other Catholic saints to avoid clashes with religious authorities.

In 1989, when a samba school called Beija-Flor planned to depict Christ as a beggar, the church prevailed, but the float entered the Sambadrome — the stadium built for viewing the parades — covered in black trash bags with a banner reading, “Even forbidden, look upon us.”

The opposition has a racial element, given that samba schools have always been predominantly Black institutions. At times, this opposition takes theological form, particularly in the demonization of Afro-Brazilian deities. Exú, a central figure in Candomblé and Umbanda, is a messenger between the human and divine worlds and has long been associated with the devil by Christian groups. But Afro-Brazilian religions, which don’t have a concept of absolute evil, see Exú as playful.

Although African-derived religiosity has been embedded in samba schools since their origins, it was only in the 1960s that they began to explicitly incorporate Black Brazilian culture into their plots. “From there, numerous parade themes highlighted Black history and figures who had previously been invisible in Brazil’s official history,” Motta said.

FILE – Priestess Laura D’Oya Yalorixa, center, takes part in an Umbanda religious ceremony at the Casa de Caridade Santa Barbara Iansa temple in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, Feb. 6, 2021. The faithful of the Umbanda religion, brought to the Americas by West African slaves, perform spiritual protection rituals as part of pre-Carnival traditions. (AP Photo/Bruna Prado)

Under Dom Orani Tempesta, archbishop of Rio de Janeiro since 2009, and with the election of Pope Francis, the Argentine bishop who championed the Amazon and its culture, the church came to support Catholic-themed parade narratives. “Today, it is common for Masses to be held at samba school headquarters, for Carnival groups to be received in sanctuaries and for their flags to be blessed in churches,” Bártolo said, though he added that the rapprochment still has its limits.


The growth of evangelical Christianity in Brazil since the 1980s has added a new dimension to the religious disputes over Carnival. Initially, evangelicals avoided the celebrations, organizing spiritual retreats during this period. Later, as they became more publicly active and aligned with conservative Catholics in criticizing Carnival, they drew political and social criticism from samba schools, while framing themselves as victims of religious persecution.

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When Rio elected Marcelo Crivella, bishop of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, mayor in 2017, “he tried, very hard, to destroy samba schools and Carnival,” Motta said.

The debate intensified recently when Pastor Gil, an evangelical Rio de Janeiro legislator, proposed a bill that would ban the use of sacred images or representations deemed disrespectful to Christian, Catholic or Evangelical faith in Carnival parades and events.

Still, Carnival has served as a space for coexistence of Brazil’s wildly divergent social, racial and cultural differences, allowing marginalized groups to gain legitimacy as they express their culture. In recent years, the parades have emphasized Afro-Brazilian religions, as if to say, Bártolo said, “This is religion, too, not just Afro culture or Brazilian culture.”

“The people of samba schools are experts in resistance,” said Motta. “They survived slavery, structural racism, state violence and state repression. The schools survived and will continue surviving.”

New Orleans celebrates Mardi Gras, the indulgent conclusion of Carnival season

NEW ORLEANS, La. (AP) — Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday, marks the climax and end of the weekslong Carnival season and a final chance for indulgence, feasting and revelry before the Christian Lent period of sacrifice and reflection.

A member of the Krewe of Zulu offers up coconuts on Mardi Gras Day, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026 in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Matthew Hinton)

Sara Cline
February 18, 2026

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — People leaned out of wrought iron balconies, hollering the iconic phrase “Throw me something, Mister” as a massive Mardi Gras parade rolled down New Orleans’ historic St. Charles Avenue on Tuesday.

Mardi Gras, also known as Fat Tuesday, marks the climax and end of the weekslong Carnival season and a final chance for indulgence, feasting and revelry before the Christian Lent period of sacrifice and reflection. The joyous goodbye to Carnival always falls the day before Ash Wednesday.

In Louisiana’s most populous city, which is world-famous for its Mardi Gras bash, people donned green, gold and purple outfits, with some opting for an abundance of sequins and others showing off homemade costumes.

The revelers began lining the streets as the sun rose. They set up chairs, coolers, grills and ladders — offering a higher vantage point.

As marching bands and floats filled with women wearing massive feathered headdresses passed by, the music echoing through the city streets, people danced and cheered. Others sipped drinks, with many opting for adult concoctions on the day of celebration rather than the usual morning coffee.

Each parade has its signature “throws” — trinkets that include plastic beads, candy, doubloons, stuffed animals, cups and toys. Hand-decorated coconuts are the coveted item from Zulu, a massive parade named after the largest ethnic group in South Africa.

As a man, dressed like a crawfish — including red fabric claws for hands — caught one of the coconuts, he waved it around, the gold glitter on the husk glistening in the sun.

Sue Mennino was dressed in a white Egyptian-inspired costume, complete with a gold headpiece and translucent cape. Her face was embellished with glitter and electric blue eyeshadow.

“The world will be here tomorrow, but today is a day off and a time to party,” Mennino said.

The party isn’t solely confined to the parade route. Throughout the French Quarter, people celebrated in the streets, on balconies and on the front porches of shotgun-style homes.

One impromptu parade was led by a man playing a washboard instrument and dressed as a blue alligator — his paper-mache tail dragging along the street, unintentionally sweeping up stray beads with it. A brass band played “The Saints” as people danced.

In Jackson Square, the costumed masses included a man painted from head to toe as a zebra, a group cosplaying as Hungry Hungry Hippos from the tabletop game and a diver wearing an antique brass and copper helmet.

“The people are the best part,” said Martha Archer, who was dressed as Madame Leota, the disembodied medium whose head appears within a crystal ball in the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disney amusement parks.

Archer’s face was painted blue and her outfit was a makeshift table that came up to her neck — giving the appearance that she was indeed a floating head.

“Everybody is just so happy,” she explained.

The good times will roll not just in New Orleans but across the state, from exclusive balls to the Cajun French tradition of the Courir de Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday Run — a rural event in Central Louisiana featuring costumed participants performing, begging for ingredients and chasing live chickens to be cooked in a communal gumbo.

Parades are also held in other Gulf Coast cities such as Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida, and there are other world-renowned celebrations in Brazil and Europe.

One of the quirkiest is an international Pancake Day competition pitting the women of Liberal, Kansas, against the women of Olney, England. Pancakes are used because they were thought to be a good way for Christians to consume the fat they were supposed to give up during the 40 days before Easter.

Contestants must carry a pancake in a frying pan and flip the pancake at the beginning and end of the 415-yard (380-meter) race.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.