Slovenia elects first woman president in a runoff vote

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) — Liberal rights advocate Natasa Pirc Musar won a runoff Sunday to become Slovenia’s first female head of state, and said she will seek to bridge the deep left-right divide in the Alpine nation of 2 million.

With nearly all of the votes counted in the small European Union nation, Pirc Musar led Slovenia’s conservative former Foreign Minister Anze Logar by 54% to 46%. Her victory boosts the country’s liberal bloc following the center-left coalition victory in Slovenia’s parliamentary election in April.

“My first task will be to open a dialogue among all Slovenians,” she said as her election team celebrated. “In the democratic election, Slovenians have shown what kind of a country they want.”

“All my life I’ve advocated the same values: democracy, human rights, tolerance. It’s time to stop dealing with the past. Many things have to be done in the future,” she declared.

Logar conceded defeat, saying he hopes Pirc Musar “will carry out all the promises” that she made during the campaign.

Pirc Musar, 54, will be the first woman to serve as president since Slovenia became independent amid the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. A prominent lawyer, Pirc Musar had represented former first lady Melania Trump in copyright and other cases in her native Slovenia.

Pope lunches with poor, denounces ‘sirens of populism”

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis ate lunch with hundreds of refugees, poor and homeless people on Sunday as he called for a renewed commitment to helping society’s weakest and denounced the “sirens of populism” that drown out their cries for help.

Francis celebrated the Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor by inviting an estimated 1,300 poor people into the Vatican for a special Mass and luncheon. Children threw their arms around his neck as he sat at one of dozens of tables set up in the Vatican audience hall.

During the Mass that preceded it, Francis denounced the indifference that the world shows to migrants and the poor, as well as the “prophets of doom” who fuel fear and conspiracies about migrants for personal gain.

“Let us not be enchanted by the sirens of populism, which exploit people’s real needs by facile and hasty solutions,” Francis said.

WIRE SERVICES