Pope Francis on Monday recommended silence and prayer to counter those who “only seek scandal,” division and destruction in what appeared to be an indirect response to allegations that he had covered up for a U.S. cardinal embroiled in sex abuse scandals.

Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former papal envoy in Washington, stunned the faithful last month by claiming Francis allegedly lifted unconfirmed Vatican sanctions against disgraced U.S. prelate Theodore McCarrick and demanding that the pope resign.

“With people lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family — silence, prayer” is the path to take, Francis said in his homily during morning Mass at the Vatican hotel where he lives.

Hours after Vigano made the claim in a statement given to conservative Catholic news media, Francis had told journalists seeking his response that he “won’t say a word” about the claims by the disgruntled former diplomat.

In his homily Monday, Francis indicated he takes his cue from God on whether to speak out or not about Vigano’s allegations.

“May the Lord give us the grace to discern when we should speak and when we should stay silent,” Francis said. “This applies to every part of life: to work, at home, in society.”

“Truth is meek, truth is silent, truth isn’t noisy,” the pope said in his Mass remarks.

Vigano has contended that while Benedict XVI was pope, he had sanctioned McCarrick, including avoiding public life, but that Francis later allegedly lifted the punishment.

During the years that McCarrick was purportedly under sanctions, the cardinal celebrated public Masses and attended other public functions, even before Francis became pontiff. Vigano claimed that he told Francis, shortly after he was elected pontiff in 2013, that McCarrick had been given sanctions by Benedict.

Weeks before Vigano went public with his claims, Francis in July yanked McCarrick’s cardinal rank after U.S. church panel deemed credible the American had sexually abused an altar boy. McCarrick has denied wrongdoing in that case.

It was the first time that a prelate had lost his cardinal’s rank in a sex abuse scandal, and the move was widely viewed as an indication that Francis was trying to make good on promises to crack down on clerics who either were found to have abused minors or adults or who covered up for priests who did.

The Vatican let several days pass before attempting to knock down some of Vigano’s contentions. On Sunday night, a former Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, and his English-language assistant, the Rev. Thomas Rosica, jointly disputed the prelate’s claims about an embarrassing encounter he arranged with U.S. anti-marriage crusader Kim Davis during Francis’ visit in the United States in 2015.

Vigano last week had insisted that Francis knew very well who Davis was and that the Vatican’s top brass had given advance approval.

Rosica said Vigano had told them that Francis had chewed him out for “deceiving” him about the meeting and for having not told the pope that Davis had been married four times. Lombardi, who served as spokesman for both Benedict and for a few years also for Francis, contended that the papal envoy should have figure out that the meeting would have caused a furor.

The Davis meeting contributed to chilly relations between Francis and the former diplomat.

Following decades of complaints by faithful in the United States and elsewhere that they were sexually abused as minors or adults by priests, or that their abusers were quietly shuffled from parish to parish, the church, including at the Vatican, has been struggling to effectively deal with the problem, including the role of higher-ups in hiding the abuses.
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Nearly half of college graduates take a first job that does not require a college degree, hurting their long-term income and advancement, according to a recent study.

The negative impact is persistent, says research from Burning Glass Technologies, a software company that researches the labor market, and the Strada Institute for the Future of Work. About two-thirds of graduates whose first jobs do not require a degree will remain “underemployed,” as the researchers call it, five years later. Five years after that, about three-fourths of the underemployed are likely to stay that way.

And the underemployed earn $10,000 less than those who took a job that requires a college degree. 

The high percentage of underemployed college graduates — 43 percent — is not surprising, says Michelle Weise, senior vice president of workforce strategies at the Strada Institute. Some of the data came from the recession of 2008, when the U.S. economy was shrinking and job opportunities were limited.

How to avoid underemployment

Both students and schools are responsible for solving this problem, Weise says.

Students need to plot their career path, she says, starting before they graduate. New graduates should not accept the first job offer they receive, if that is economically possible, she says. Wait for a job that could lead to better future positions.

Choosing a field of study where jobs are plentiful is helpful, she says. Graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics are less likely to be underemployed, studies show.

But students who earn degrees in liberal arts — history, English, psychology — may have a harder time finding a job that uses their abilities. Weiss says that colleges and universities have to do better to support liberal arts graduates in their job search.

“Something we have struggled with, especially since the Great (2008) Recession, is that we are not great at translating what those … skills are that students are developing in those liberal arts programs and how they translate into the workforce,” Weise told VOA. “We’re not good at showing our students, before they go on the market, how … marketable they really are.”

Peter Cappelli is a professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He says asking students to start preparing earlier to enter the workforce is only part of the solution.

“We’re telling them, ‘Pick your career when you’re 17, and you’re applying to college,'” Cappelli says. “And then if you happen to pick the wrong one and you graduate and there’s no demand there, you’re out of luck.

“Or you could get a very practical degree that helps get you an immediate job, but you haven’t learned anything that will help you later in your career,” he says.

Cappelli notes that in recent years, colleges and universities have worked hard to make higher education available to more people. But as the number of degree-holders in the country has increased, graduates may find it harder to make themselves appear more desirable than others with a similar degree.

Also, employers have increasingly come to expect more from graduates, somewhat unfairly, Cappelli says. Many advertisements for positions that formerly would be a good fit for recent graduates now ask for years of experience.

Cappelli says that, to make themselves more competitive, college students might gain skills outside their college major. Liberal arts students might consider taking classes in computer programming during the summer break.

Is higher education still a good investment?

Nicole Smith says she understands why students and parents would ask if pursuing higher education is worth it.

Smith, the chief economist for the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce in Washington, says a traditional four-year degree is not the only path to a meaningful and well-paying job. And as the cost of higher education rises, families need to think carefully about the investment.

But the majority of well-paying jobs in the future will require some kind of degree, she says.

“We don’t want to discourage people from even stepping foot through the door or to discourage people from even thinking of that opportunity,” Smith said.

Some graduates choose jobs that do not require a college degree so they can explore their interests and identities. This exploration may help them focus their career desires and goals, Smith says.
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The U.S. military says it has decided to cancel $300 million in aid to Pakistan that had been suspended over Islamabad’s perceived failure to act decisively against militants, in a new blow to deteriorating ties.

The so-called Coalition Support Funds were part of a broader suspension in aid to Pakistan announced by President Donald Trump at the start of the year, when he accused Pakistan of rewarding past assistance with “nothing but lies & deceit.”

The Trump administration says Islamabad is granting safe haven to insurgents who are waging a 17-year-old war in neighboring Afghanistan, a charge Pakistan denies. 

But U.S. officials had held out the possibility that Pakistan could win back that support if it changed its behavior.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, in particular, had an opportunity to authorize $300 million in CSF funds through this summer if he saw concrete Pakistani actions to go after insurgents. Mattis chose not to, a U.S. official told Reuters.

“Due to a lack of Pakistani decisive actions in support of the South Asia Strategy the remaining $300 [million] was reprogrammed,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Kone Faulkner said.

Faulkner said the Pentagon aimed to spend the $300 million on “other urgent priorities” if approved by Congress. He said another $500 million in CSF was stripped by Congress from Pakistan earlier this year, to bring the total withheld to $800 million.

The disclosure came ahead of an expected visit by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the top U.S. military officer, General Joseph Dunford, to Islamabad. Mattis told reporters on Tuesday that combating militants would be a “primary part of the discussion.”

Experts on the Afghan conflict, America’s longest war, argue that militant safe havens in Pakistan have allowed Taliban-linked insurgents in Afghanistan a place to plot deadly strikes and regroup after ground offensives.

Increasing pressure

The Pentagon’s decision showed that the United States, which has sought to change Pakistani behavior, is still increasing pressure on Pakistan’s security apparatus.

It also underscored that Islamabad has yet to deliver the kind of change Washington seeks.

“It is a calibrated, incremental ratcheting up of pressure on Pakistan,” said Sameer Lalwani, co-director of the South Asia program at the Stimson Center think tank in Washington.

Reuters reported in August that the Trump administration had quietly started cutting scores of Pakistani officers from coveted training and educational programs that have been a hallmark of bilateral military relations for more than a decade.

The Pentagon made similar determinations on CSF in the past, but this year’s move could get more attention from Islamabad and its new prime minister, Imran Khan, at a time when its economy is struggling.

Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves have plummeted over the past year and it will soon decide on whether to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund or friendly nations such as China.

“They are squeezing them when they know that they’re vulnerable and it is probably a signal about what to expect should Pakistan come to the IMF for a loan,” Lalwani said. The United States has the largest share of votes at the IMF.

Khan, who once suggested he might order the shooting down of U.S. drones if they entered Pakistani airspace, has opposed the United States’ open-ended presence in Afghanistan. In his victory speech, he said he wanted “mutually beneficial” relations with Washington.

A Pakistani official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he was unaware of a formal notification of the U.S. decision on assistance but said one was expected by the end of September.

Pakistan has received more than $33 billion in U.S. assistance since 2002, including more than $14 billion in CSF, a U.S. Defense Department program to reimburse allies that have incurred costs in supporting counterinsurgency operations. Pakistan could again be eligible next year for CSF.
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Orson Swindle’s first conversation with the late Senator John McCain was tapped out in code on a wall between prison cells.

The retired Marine officer met McCain in 1967 when both were prisoners of war at the infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison in Vietnam. U.S. servicemen used a secret code to communicate with each other while confined to their cells.

“The first thing he tapped to me was a joke that I can’t tell you,” Swindle said, because the joke was a bawdy one.

The two men, imprisoned together until their release in early 1973, quickly formed a friendship that lasted until McCain’s death last week.

McCain’s condition was dire when he was brought into what was formally known as Hòa Lò prison with two broken arms, a broken leg and other injuries sustained after his Skyhawk bomber jet was hit by a Vietnamese missile, October 26, 1967, forcing him to eject and parachute into Trúc Bach Lake. He was rescued from the lake and beaten by North Vietnamese fighters.

Air Force Colonel Bud Day, a close friend of both men, told Swindle that when McCain was “dumped” in his cell after his capture, immobile in a full body cast, he didn’t look like he would survive. “[Day] just said, ‘I don’t see how this guy’s going to live,’” Swindle said. “But that’s John McCain. He never, ever gave up.”

During a phone conversation Friday, Swindle said he and McCain, later imprisoned in the same cell, talked constantly — partly to keep their minds sharp, partly to pass the time.

“We talked about everything we had ever done, remembered, thought of, hoped for. It was just an amazing friendship; he was a fascinating guy. … We told stories about our kids and everything. Every movie we’d ever seen, every book we’d ever read.”

​Cracking jokes, lifting spirits

Leon ‘Lee’ Ellis, a retired Air Force colonel, was also imprisoned with McCain. He was one of the youngest of the POWs and knew McCain first by reputation, as the son of the admiral in charge of U.S. Pacific forces. McCain’s refusal of a chance for release had made an impression on Ellis. Despite his status as an admiral’s son, despite his life-threatening injuries, McCain refused to leave prison until all of the men imprisoned ahead of him could be released as well.

“I knew he’d refused an opportunity to go home, but I didn’t know him personally until we were moved into the same camp,” Ellis said. Once the two men were acquainted, he enjoyed the famous son’s company. “We would walk together inside the courtyard of the camp, inside the walls, and talk and joke and tell stories.”

Swindle said humor was one of the tools the POWs deployed against the terror, uncertainty and monotony of life in enemy territory.

“You could easily get down in the dumps,” he said. With some men enduring captivity as long as eight years by the end of the war, Swindle said, “we needed to pick each other up.

“We had been through so much that was terrifying and painful,” he said. He noted that the torture to which POWs were subjected — “that’s the subject of a whole lot of other discussion” — largely stopped after the death of Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh in 1969. But with the easing of the struggle to survive came the challenge of staying optimistic in the face of monotonous uncertainty.

​McCain was often the ringleader of projects designed to lift the men’s spirits. 

“The last Christmas we were there,” Swindle said, “we decided we’d have a Christmas play. We enacted ‘A Christmas Carol,’ totally ad-libbed. John played Scrooge, of course.”

Three months later when word of their impending release finally came, Ellis said the men were careful not to betray any joy or hopefulness to their captors. “We were determined, one, not to give them a photo op of cheering and going crazy, and two, we also had an attitude of we’ll wait and see. So when they read the protocol to us out in the camp yard there, we all just turned and walked away and walked back to our cells.” He said even the day his group left the camp, unbridled celebration didn’t break out until their plane was over international waters.

From hell-raiser to statesman

Many of the POWs from that time are still in touch today, their struggle to survive the experience binding them together in a unique fraternity. McCain, Swindle, and Ellis have all been involved in POW reunions. McCain wrote the foreword to Ellis’s 2012 book on leadership. Ellis and Swindle supported McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

The time in the POW camp shaped the rest of McCain’s life, Swindle said. 

“He was a carefree, hell-raising young naval aviator when he got shot down, and by his own admission, he had not excelled in much of anything except resisting authority and raising hell.” 

Emulating the courage of others in the camp, McCain became more serious and focused. He became, Swindle said, “the John McCain that the public came to know when he went to Congress.”

By the end of McCain’s career, he had become an example of the rare lawmaker who would engage in across-the-aisle compromise. 

“He was courageous. He was a statesman, something we desperately need in our Congress,” Swindle said. “In fact, I would say that we need about 90 more senators like John McCain, and we’d be a hell of a lot better country.

“He never gave up,” Swindle added, summing up what was most admirable about his longtime friend. “He never gave up in prison, when he was on his deathbed. Never gave up when he was being tortured. He never gave up in the heartache and pain of being separated from family. And you’ve seen him operate in Congress. He never gave up on his efforts to do the right thing.”
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Family, loved ones, celebrities and political leaders, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton, were among the thousands who gathered at Detroit’s Greater Grace Temple Friday for an all-day funeral to honor Aretha Franklin. The star-studded event with performances by Stevie Wonder, Jennifer Hudson and Faith Hill among others was at times somber and often joyful, a larger than life tribute to the woman known and loved around the world as the “Queen of Soul.” VOA’s Cindy Saine has more.
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