- ‘It’s like erasure’: Former VCU diversity office staffers speak
- Trump’s AmeriCorps cuts end Virginia community service grants
- Youngkin to veto $900M in budget items to hedge against risk of federal cuts
- Botched tax rebate process deepens concerns over Richmond’s finance department
- Southwest, Southside Virginians could bear the brunt of Medicaid cuts
- IN OTHER NEWS: VPM loses funding from federal ‘Ready to Learn’ grant
Richmond reacts to the new pope
Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected pope Thursday, becoming the Catholic Church’s first leader from the United States. After the announcement from Rome, the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in downtown Richmond put gold and yellow bunting over its entrance and adorned a photo of the new pope with gold and yellow ribbon.
Father Tony Marques, the rector of the cathedral, was celebrating noon Mass as the Vatican’s chimney was emitting the white smoke that signifies the selection of a new pontiff.
“When I went to take the vestments off, my phone was blowing up,” he said. “It was a surprise.”
Prevost, a Chicago native who chose Leo XIV as his papal name, said in his first address from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City that he wanted his message of peace to "enter your hearts, reach your families and all people, wherever they are."
BizSense Beat: Feed More HQ, Powhatan private school, VCU Health expansion
BizSense Beat is a weekly collaboration between VPM News and Richmond BizSense that recaps the region’s top business stories.
This week, BizSense reporter Jackie DiBartolomeo and VPM host Lyndon German discuss an out-of-town developer’s plans to turn the former headquarters of nonprofit food bank Feed More into rental housing near the Diamond District, a Henrico County school building a new campus in Powhatan, and VCU Health looking to expand its downtown Richmond neonatal intensive care unit.