A day after US President Donald Trump declared a US boycott of the upcoming G20 Summit, Pope Leo XIV endorsed the G20's positions on debt and inequality as resonant with his papacy.

A day after US President Donald Trump declared a US boycott of the upcoming G20 Summit, Pope Leo XIV endorsed the G20's positions on debt and inequality as resonant with his papacy.

Special envoy Mcebisi Jonas spent months restructuring a relationship between SA and the Holy See to secure the meeting on Saturday, 8 November, between Pope Leo XIV and President Cyril Ramaphosa and help ensure that the cardinal of the Catholic Church in SA, Stephen Brislin, begins the process to invite the head of the Catholic Church to South Africa.

Brislin is a member of the College of Cardinals, the Pope's closest body of advisers.

On Friday, US President Donald Trump issued a social media post banning all US officials from attending the G20 Summit in Johannesburg on 22 and 23 November, because, he falsely claimed, "Afrikaners ... are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated."

US Vice-President JD Vance was to have attended the summit, and his planned visit to South Africa, together with his wife, Usha, and young family, had taken months to prepare.

As J Brooks Spector reports here, the US embassy in South Africa was thrown into disarray...