分类： society

A devastating severe storm swept through Romania in the overnight hours leading into Wednesday, cutting through a weeks-long record-breaking heatwave and leaving one person dead, widespread flood damage and thousands of urgent calls for emergency response across 20 of the Eastern European nation’s counties.

According to Romania’s General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations (IGSU), the torrential downpour and high winds impacted a total of 60 localities across the country, with the capital Bucharest and its adjacent Ilfov County bearing the brunt of the extreme weather. The sole confirmed fatality occurred in the region when a large tree, uprooted by powerful gusts, collapsed onto a moving vehicle, killing the occupant inside.

In the wake of the storm, IGSU teams worked around the clock to respond to more than 2,200 distress calls from residents trapped by floodwaters or dealing with storm-related debris. Crews pumped standing water out of more than 350 residential properties and 100 public streets that had been left submerged by the intense rainfall. To supplement local response efforts, emergency management officials deployed additional rescuers and heavy equipment—including water pumps, utility trucks and chainsaws—from neighboring unaffected counties to support recovery work.

Preliminary damage assessments from the IGSU confirm that nearly 1,000 trees were felled across the hardest-hit regions, and 495 parked and moving vehicles suffered damage from falling debris or floodwaters.

The extreme storm event comes as much of Continental Europe grapples with an intense summer heatwave, which has pushed temperatures in parts of Romania to forecast highs above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). The sweltering conditions created the unstable atmospheric conditions that fueled the sudden severe storm, according to national weather officials.

On Wednesday, Romania’s National Meteorological Administration extended its warning for additional extreme weather, noting that ongoing atmospheric instability would likely trigger more torrential rainfall and severe thunderstorms across the country’s western and southern regions in the coming hours.

A devastating residential fire has left multiple people dead and several others injured in the Belgian port city of Antwerp, local law enforcement confirmed Wednesday. The inferno ignited shortly before 10 a.m. local time (8 a.m. GMT) in the city’s Linkeroever district, with thick, acrid smoke quickly billowing out from the eighth floor of the 10-storey apartment building, visible for blocks around the site.

Captured on dramatic on-the-ground footage, one resident was seen scrambling from his own balcony through a neighbor’s window to outrun the suffocating black smoke that was rapidly engulfing his unit. The building is home to more than 200 residents, according to local police data.

Geert Dewulf, one of the building’s residents, shared his harrowing escape experience with Belgian public television. “Thick smoke blocked our path to the stairwell, so we couldn’t get out of our flat,” he explained. “We barricaded ourselves inside to keep the smoke out and waited on our balcony for help. The fire brigade showed up with their ladder and rescued us about 10 minutes later.”

Emergency responders have been conducting a systematic door-to-door search of the entire building to locate any unaccounted-for residents. Fire department officials noted that the rapid spread of toxic smoke through the building’s corridors created major challenges for coordinated evacuation efforts immediately after the fire broke out.

In one notable case, a local man confirmed that his parents-in-law — including Bob Cools, the former mayor of Antwerp — had been successfully pulled from the building and transported to a local hospital for evaluation. He added that despite desperate attempts to rescue his family cat from the burning unit, the crew could not reach the animal in time.

As of Wednesday afternoon, investigators have not yet determined the official cause of the fire. Multiple witnesses told local newspaper De Standaard that renovation work was ongoing on the building’s roof at the time the blaze broke out, which is being examined as a potential contributing factor by authorities.

LONDON – Britain’s independent police oversight body announced Wednesday that two British law enforcement officers are facing a potential gross misconduct investigation after body camera footage captured them handcuffing an 18-year-old stabbing victim as he lay dying. The case, which has already sparked public outrage and rioting in southern England, also includes a parallel probe into whether racial or religious bias influenced the officers’ actions on the scene.

The two officers are members of Hampshire Constabulary, the first emergency responders to reach the attack site in Southampton, a coastal city in southern England. The incident dates back to December 2025, when 18-year-old Henry Nowak, a white man, was fatally stabbed by 23-year-old Vickrum Digwa. Immediately following the attack, Digwa, who identifies as Sikh, fabricated a false narrative that he himself had been the target of a racist attack initiated by Nowak.

Body-worn camera footage from the officers’ uniforms documented Nowak’s final minutes alive, showing the teenager in handcuffs as he told the responding officers he had been stabbed and was struggling to breathe. When the footage was made public, it sent shockwaves across the United Kingdom, drawing widespread condemnation of the officers’ response.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), the national body that oversees allegations of police misconduct in England and Wales, confirmed that the two officers are suspected of violating multiple professional conduct standards. Alleged breaches include failures in meeting core duty and responsibility requirements, inappropriate use of force, and conduct that brings disrepute to the police service. The watchdog is also formally examining whether the officers’ decision to treat Nowak as a suspect rather than a victim was shaped by racial or religious prejudice stemming from Digwa’s false claim.

Derrick Campbell, IOPC’s director of engagement, emphasized that the launch of an investigation does not guarantee disciplinary action will follow the probe. “At the end of our investigation, we will decide whether any officers should face disciplinary proceedings,” Campbell stated in an official release.

The tragedy has already become a flashpoint for political unrest in the region. Following Digwa’s murder conviction last month, where he was sentenced to a minimum of 21 years in prison, far-right activists and politicians seized on Nowak’s death to push unsubstantiated claims that the British justice system holds inherent bias against white people. The rhetoric erupted into violent public disorder in Southampton in the wake of the sentencing, leaving communities on edge as the misconduct investigation unfolds.

The ultratraditionalist Catholic breakaway group the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is moving forward with a controversial plan to consecrate four new bishops without required papal approval, a direct act of defiance against Pope Leo XIV that church law defines as a schismatic rupture of Catholic unity, triggering automatic excommunication for all clergy involved in the ceremony.

This unauthorized ordination represents the first significant test of authority for Pope Leo, who has centered his early papacy on repairing long-running divisions between the Holy See and traditionalist factions—tensions that deepened significantly over the course of Pope Francis’s pontificate. To understand the current standoff, it is necessary to trace the SSPX’s decades-long history of dissent from official church teaching.

Founded explicitly to oppose the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s ecumenical council that transformed Catholic life—revising the church’s relations with other faith communities including Judaism and Protestant Christianity, and allowing the celebration of Mass in local vernacular languages instead of the traditional Latin—SSPX has remained outside formal Vatican structures since the 1970s. In 1975, Vatican officials suspended SSPX founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre from priestly ministry and formally suppressed the society. The first major schism occurred in 1988, when Lefebvre consecrated four additional bishops without papal consent, leading the Holy See to immediately issue excommunications for all involved; to this day, the group holds no official legal status within the global Catholic Church.

Despite this break from communion, the SSPX has grown steadily into a tangible alternative structure for ultratraditional Catholics, according to the group’s own internal statistics. Today it counts 2 active bishops, 751 priests, 264 seminarians across five formation houses, 145 religious brothers, 88 lay oblates, and 250 religious sisters, with members representing 50 nationalities worldwide.

Under Catholic canon law, any act of consecrating a bishop without explicit papal approval triggers automatic excommunication for both the ordaining clergy and the individuals receiving ordination. Unlike formal penalties that require a public Vatican declaration, this penalty takes effect immediately the moment the consecration is completed. Canon law experts note that while the penalty is automatic, the Holy See will almost certainly issue a public response to the high-profile act of defiance to affirm its authority.

Father Robert Gahl, a moral theology scholar at the Catholic University of America, explained that excommunication is the harshest penalty available under canon law, but it is framed as a “medicinal” measure rather than a permanent punishment. “The medicine may be bitter tasting, meaning that there’s a harsh feature of it because it’s a penalty, but it’s meant to bring about a change in the one who receives it,” Gahl noted. Crucially, the penalty does not invalidate the ordination itself: SSPX bishops and priests are considered validly ordained but minister illicitly, outside of church approval. While Pope Leo could extend excommunication to lay attendees of the ceremony, most church observers do not expect him to take that step.

The current rift comes after decades of shifting outreach and tension between successive popes and the SSPX. Pope Benedict XVI, who made reconciliation with the breakaway group a core priority of his papacy, extended two major concessions to draw the SSPX back into full communion: in 2007, he relaxed longstanding restrictions on celebration of the traditional Latin Mass across the global church, and in 2009 he lifted the 1988 excommunications of the four SSPX bishops. That gesture quickly turned into a major diplomatic scandal, however, when it was revealed that one of the bishops, Richard Williamson, was an open Holocaust denier. Williamson had repeated his denial of Nazi gas chamber killings in a Swiss television interview just days before Benedict’s decree was made public. The pope later acknowledged that a basic online search would have revealed Williamson’s extreme views. Williamson was ultimately expelled from the SSPX in 2012 for insubordination after he refused to recognize the group’s leadership and called for its superior to step down; he died in 2025.

Pope Francis, despite a general distrust of traditionalist factions and a broader crackdown on the spread of the traditional Latin Mass, which he framed as a source of division in the church, extended key concessions of his own to the SSPX. In 2015, as part of his Jubilee of Mercy initiative, he issued a decree allowing Catholics to receive valid sacramental absolution from SSPX priests, a gesture he later extended indefinitely. He also granted SSPX priests permission to officiate valid Catholic marriages. Analysts note that in response to the new unauthorized consecrations, Pope Leo could choose to revoke these concessions as part of the Vatican’s official response.

Within global Catholicism, the SSPX is just one fringe traditionalist faction outside of communion with Rome; many other traditionalist Catholics remain in full communion with the Holy See. As part of his early push for church unity, Pope Leo already signaled his outreach to mainstream traditionalists by allowing a prominent American cardinal to celebrate the traditional Latin Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica during his first year in office.

This reporting is part of the Associated Press’ religion coverage, produced in collaboration with The Conversation US and supported by funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP holds sole editorial responsibility for the content.

A decades-long theological rift within global Catholicism is set to escalate this week, as the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a breakaway ultratraditionalist faction, plans to move forward with consecrating four new bishops without the mandatory approval of Pope Leo XIV — an act that carries the Catholic Church’s most severe penalty under canon law.

The high-stakes ceremony is scheduled for Wednesday at the SSPX’s seminary in Econe, a remote mountain valley in southwestern Switzerland. Organizers expect thousands of attendees to gather, all drawn to the faction’s rejection of modern Catholic reforms and commitment to the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, which has been largely replaced by vernacular-language liturgies across most of the global Church. Despite a last-minute public appeal from Pope Leo to cancel the ordination, the SSPX has refused to alter its plans. In an open letter released Tuesday, the American-born pontiff warned that ordaining bishops without papal mandate constitutes a “sin of extreme gravity” that inflicts lasting harm on the faction’s own followers.
Under longstanding Catholic canon law, any unauthorized episcopal consecration triggers automatic excommunication for all parties involved: the four bishop-designates and the prelate who will administer the rite. The act is also formally classified as schism, a deliberate break from the institutional unity of the global Catholic Church.

Oddly, the event has been framed by the SSPX as a joyous milestone rather than an act of rebellion. The group’s official consecration website has run a public countdown timer for days, and social media clips show seminarians cheerfully preparing event logistics. Registered attendees can purchase commemorative merchandise, including branded baseball caps marked with the “Econe2026” seal and a 75 Swiss franc ($92.50) souvenir wine set dubbed “Cuvee des Sacres.” The four-bottle gift set features four regional grape varieties, each bottle labeled with an episcopal symbol: a miter, bishop’s ring, cross, and crozier.
For the SSPX, threats of schism and excommunication carry little weight. The faction has long held that it alone is defending the unchanging traditions of the Catholic faith against what it calls widespread heresy in the modern institutional Church. “We don’t fear it. It pains us immensely, but we believe that the good we seek is greater than the pain that will be inflicted upon us,” said Marc-André Mabillard, the SSPX’s media manager. In a formal response to Pope Leo’s appeal, SSPX superior General Rev. Davide Pagliarani asked the pontiff to delay imposing any formal penalties.
The current confrontation is rooted in a split that dates back to the 1970s. The SSPX was founded by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in explicit opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), the 1960s global church gathering that transformed Catholic outreach to other faiths, restructured church-state relations, and replaced the universal Latin Mass with local-language services. Thirty-eight years to the day before Wednesday’s planned ceremony, the Vatican declared the SSPX’s last set of unauthorized episcopal consecrations a schismatic act, imposing automatic excommunication on all involved bishops.
Today, the SSPX rejects core tenets of Vatican II teaching, accusing the modern Church of being corrupted by modernism, liberalism, and ecumenism. The faction justifies its new ordinations by what it calls a “state of necessity”: only two of the SSPX’s original four bishops are still living, and the group says it needs additional bishops to serve its global community of 800 worship sites spread across 77 countries, ordain new priests, and administer confirmation via the ancient Latin rite. The SSPX denies the act is a direct challenge to Pope Leo’s authority, saying the sole purpose of the consecrations is to serve the pastoral needs of its followers. The four bishop-designates have been named as Pascal Schreiber (Switzerland), Michael Goldade (United States), and Michel Poinsinet de Sivry and Marc Hanappier (both France).
The planned consecrations have drawn widespread criticism from across the Catholic community, even from many conservative and traditionalist Catholics, who frame the act as an unacceptable act of disobedience to the pope that damages the unity of the Church. “You can’t serve tradition while disobeying the church and her authority,” said Rev. Robert Gahl, an ethics scholar at the Catholic University of America.
Prominent Catholic commentator and St. John Paul II biographer George Weigel noted that the dispute between the Vatican and the SSPX extends far beyond the language of the Mass. Writing in First Things magazine, Weigel explained the divide centers on “a rejection of the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the church, salvation, religious freedom, church–state relations, and the church’s relationship to other religions.” Weigel also recalled that SSPX founder Lefebvre supported the collaborationist Vichy regime in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, and that one of the faction’s founding bishops publicly denied the Holocaust.
Mabillard acknowledged the faction’s regret over the rift with the Vatican, telling reporters: “We have great sadness to not be understood by our leader,” before confirming: “We are changing absolutely nothing in our plans.”
This report includes contributions from Keaten in Geneva. Associated Press religion coverage is supported via a collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP holds sole editorial responsibility for this content.