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Putting to rest weeks of speculation, Pope Leo XIV announced May 24 that Cardinal Robert Sarah, the Guinean prelate and former prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, will serve as his special envoy to the sanctuary of Sainte-Anne-d’Auray this July.

The cardinal will preside over liturgical celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of the apparitions of Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, to Breton farmer Yvon Nicolazic between 1623 and 1625. The anniversary, celebrated throughout 2025 by the Diocese of Vannes, will culminate during the Grand Pardon of Saint Anne on July 25–26.

The Vatican announcement follows a swirl of rumors surrounding Cardinal Sarah’s role. Social media posts had falsely claimed that the traditionalist favorite had been appointed as a special envoy to the “global south,” tasked with sensitive diplomatic and ecclesial missions to safeguard church unity. The reports—suggesting an unprecedented and sweeping mandate—prompted Cardinal Sarah to respond in an interview with the Italian outlet La Bussola: “It’s disrespectful to the Holy Father to attribute such stupidity to him.”

In the end, the cardinal will represent the pope in the south—of Brittany. He is scheduled to lead a procession and celebrate a pontifical Mass on Saturday, July 26, at 10:30 a.m. in the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-d’Auray, the spiritual heart of the region.

His visit will also coincide with the Sainte-Anne Festival, often dubbed the “Breton World Youth Day.” From July 24 to 27, young people ages 16 to 30 from the Diocese of Vannes will gather for four days of worship, concerts, talks, and fellowship. After the festival, adult participants will depart from Sainte-Anne-d’Auray for Rome to take part in the Jubilee for Young People, set for July 28 to August 3.

The roots of the Sainte-Anne sanctuary date back to 1625. Built on the site of reported apparitions of Saint Anne—the grandmother of Christ—to farmer Yvon Nicolazic, it has drawn millions of pilgrims over the centuries. The first vision took place in August 1623 in the hamlet of Keranna, in the parish of Pluneret, where Nicolazic said Anne appeared holding a torch.

The most significant apparition came during the night of July 25–26, 1624. Speaking in Breton, she revealed her identity for the first time: “Me zo Anna Mam Mari”—“I am Anne, mother of Mary.” She continued, instructing Nicolazic to tell his parish priest about a chapel once built in her name on a nearby plot called Bocenno. “It was the first in all the land. It’s been in ruins for 924 years and six months. I wish for it to be rebuilt as soon as possible, and for you to care for it, because God wants me to be honored there. God wants you to come in procession…”

Further reading: A prophet or a controversial figure in the Church of Africa?

The final apparition came on March 7, 1625. Once again carrying a torch, Saint Anne instructed Nicolazic to gather his neighbors and follow the light. “You will find an image that will protect you from the world, which will at last know the truth of what I have promised you.”

The torch led them to the field of Boceno. As they dug, they uncovered a wooden statue of Saint Anne—a sign confirming Nicolazic’s divine mission to rebuild the ancient chapel. Four centuries later, the sanctuary remains one of France’s most visited pilgrimage sites, drawing more than 800,000 people each year.

The Hollywood sign and the Capitol Records building are undisputed L.A. icons. But the L.A. murals of Fernando Valenzuela and Shohei Ohtani by artist Robert Vargas aren't far behind.

On June 7, Vargas is set to unveil his latest work on a wall of Fair Oaks Burger, a longtime Altadena business whose owners helped feed residents and workers after the January fires.

“I said yes to painting a mural at Fair Oaks Burger, because it was a great opportunity to be able to join in the support of this incredible resilient community of Altadena that is just trying to pick up the pieces,” Vargas told LAist.

There are grim reminders of the Eaton Fire’s devastation on all sides of Fair Oaks Burger.

Rubble is all that’s left of apartments next to its parking lot. The walls of a cinder block building across the street still stand, but its roof and insides are ash.

Fair Oaks Burger, however, did not burn down, and the owners, sisters Janet and Christy Lee, opened their parking lot in March to feed residents for free. They continue to host a free farmers’ market food distribution there every Saturday.

“We wanted to put something that is impactful, an inspiration for people that when they do come back for the first time ... it's not just all doom and gloom; that there is some hope and there's something bright and inspirational,” Janet Lee said.

Many other new murals have been going up in the area, and she hopes they’ll attract people from outside Altadena in order to help struggling businesses.

What the mural will look like

The idea for the mural came after Janet Lee attended the unveiling of another Vargas mural at a MacArthur Park food pantry run by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. She approached Vargas, who later stopped by the restaurant, looked at the south-facing exterior wall and got inspired. The foundation will pay Vargas to paint the mural.

Vargas grew up in Boyle Heights, and requests for his art have taken him to Japan and, more recently, New York. He doesn’t just paint celebrities. A work in progress in downtown L.A. depicts a Tongva girl.

Many of Vargas’ murals are monumental, and he specializes in depictions of expressive faces.

What will he paint on the wall at Fair Oaks Burger?

“I can't tell you exactly what it's going to be,” Vargas said, “but I can tell you that it's going to be something that reflects the community and even, possibly, integrates some of the people there from the community in the mural.”

Vargas works fast. He said it’s going to take him about four days to finish the mural, which is set to be unveiled June 7.

“I think the unifying theme from my murals is, really, a sense of compassion for humanity ... wanting to create something for the greater good,” Vargas said.

The restaurant’s owners want to start replacing the image of devastation people have of Altadena with images of hope, resiliency and the desire to help each other to rebuild their neighborhoods.

From the second line of Robert Macfarlane’s new ode to nature, I was caught in the current, rushed along the rapids of his exploration into a question with fundamental consequences: Is this river — that river, any river — alive? Not simply as an ecosystem or a home to animals, but is a river a living being itself? If so, does a river have memory and intention? What about needs or rights? Each question begets another, sweeping Macfarlane, his companions and now his readers along on that tide of thought.

Rivers do not resemble life forms as we’re used to them, though the language of rivers suggests they could. As bodies of water, rivers already have headwaters, mouths and arms. Seen from above, meandering rivers resemble vascular systems or neural networks. So why not assume they have thoughts, feelings and needs too? “For those who, like me, have been largely raised on rationalism, to imagine a river is alive in a way that exceeds the sum of the lives it contains is difficult, counterintuitive work,” the author writes, though it seems early into the book that he has already made his leap from rationalism to animism, at least for the rivers he sees.

“Words make worlds,” he reflects. “In English, we ‘it’ rivers, trees, mountains, oceans, birds, and animals: a mode of address that reduces them to the status of stuff.” Part of his quest, then, is to shift his thinking: If rivers — and the rest — are no longer an it, can they be a who? If so, then the river closest to my home, the Los Angeles River (Paayme Paxaayt as named by the Tongva), is no longer a river that flows but a river who flows. Does that change the river for me? That I have to keep fighting my computer’s grammar settings to ignore the “error” of “river who flows” suggests how far we have to go. The thingness of nature is deeply set in Western thought; recalibration will be complex.

Macfarlane’s title question takes him to three countries, each home to threatened rivers: Los Cedros in Ecuador, Adyar River in India and Mutehekau Shipu (also known as Magpie River) in Canada. At each visit, he considers what the rivers give to us and what we give to them — an exchange of nurturing for poison, usually. Human-led danger circles each in various forms: logging, pollution, dams. One of the rivers is already considered dead, the other two are still vibrantly alive.

In each country, Macfarlane is accompanied by the river’s allies, people who already see each water body as living and often live nearby as neighbors. These stories are peppered with rights of nature discussions exploring how Ecuador and New Zealand have extended to certain rivers legal rights to flow uninterrupted and established guardianship councils that attempt to speak for the rivers. He and allies consider how activists in India and Canada are trying to do the same without risking reducing these legal protections to performative nonsense.

While those discussions could be weighed down by politics, Macfarlane’s touch is deft, giving us exactly enough to consider the question while also showing us how this is not just about rivers but about us. Sick rivers don’t end at their banks, but spread into communities. It’s no coincidence that my neighborhood, Frogtown, is no longer home to any frogs despite easy access to the river. (Once, before the river was attacked, communities of toads hopped through yards and sang choruses in the night.) As I read this book, I went on long, ambling walks along the L.A. River, trying to see it as Macfarlane might. Perhaps he would describe it as sick with pollution, or jailed by concrete channeling. Would he see Paayme Paxaayt as hopeful? Defiant? Or doomed?

Macfarlane’s writing is as beautiful as the rivers and the hope he’s describing. Everywhere he looks is art — a “sunset has slaughter in it,” a “cloud-forest is a steaming, glowing furnace of green,” a sun rises “red as a Coke can over the ocean” and “faced with a river, as with a god, apprehension splinters into apophasis.” His paragraphs flow like the water he admires: sometimes tranquil and easy, other times a tumbling, mixing, effervescent torrent directed by commas, never promising a full stop. But don’t let his elegiac prose divert you — there is a dedicated scholar at work here. There’s the obvious proof: a detailed glossary, and a notes and bibliography section that runs over 30 pages. Then there’s the more subtle proof: The whole book is a weighty question whose answer impacts disciplines like law, business, history and philosophy. Macfarlane takes us through each like creeks feeding into a stream. The philosophical underpinning sees the most impressive transformation. He does his own unlearning of anthropocentrism on the page through his intense experiences with these three rivers, concluding only when the rivers are done with him: “I am rivered.” He is showing us the way to do our own unlearning, too.

How we view our relationship to nature is a vital question that people around the world are reconsidering. Climate change has disrupted many natural patterns, and we’re waking up to the reality that solutions will involve more than reusable water bottles and biodegradable straws. Here in L.A., our year kicked off with devastating fires that we are still recovering from. The aftermath begs us to really consider the questions Macfarlane is asking. Are our rivers alive? What about our forests? If so, how are we going to treat them?