Pope Leo XIV strongly affirmed the rights of the weakest against the ambitions of the powerful during an audience Saturday with refugees from Chagos, a contested Indian Ocean archipelago that is home to a strategic U.S.-U.K. military base.
History's first American pope insisted on the right of the Chagossian people to return to their homes and hailed a recent U.K.-Mauritius treaty over the archipelago's future as symbolically important on the international stage.
