The legacy of Pope Francis

Welcome to the il manifesto global newsletter, an essential weekly briefing of progressive news delivered to you each week.

What we're reading

• Across the country, the oil and gas industry and power companies have exploited a struggling news industry and a fraught political process to fight the transition to clean energy and maximize profits, Floodlight and its partners have reported. In Florida, two power companies paid a consulting firm to hire newspapers to attack a pro-solar politician. In Alabama, the state’s largest monopoly electric company purchased a historic Black newspaper, then didn’t write about soaring power bills. In California, Chevron launched its own newsroom when other papers shuttered; it doesn’t cover itself critically. ProPublica

• Liberals cannot afford to be continually amazed at the success of their rivals. If liberal democracy is to thrive and not just survive in the 21st century, we must develop a deeper understanding of the attraction of alternative political conceptions and their envisioned good life that competes with it. Modern politics will increasingly center on what we might call soulcraft — the cultivation of a sense of self and character — rather than solely statecraft, which focuses on managing political, social and economic affairs. Like it or not, the central political question of our time may well be about the good life — and who gets to define it. Noema

• In Lampedusa – as in Lesbos three years later – the pope was as determined to express compassion for the living as for those who had died embarking on perilous journeys. “Who wept for these people who were aboard the boat?” he asked during an open-air mass after tossing a wreath into the sea in their memory. “For the young mothers who brought their babies? For these men who wanted to support their families? We are a society that has forgotten how to cry.” The Guardian