{"id":19035,"date":"2026-05-23T07:30:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T07:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/19035\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T07:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T07:30:20","slug":"pope-leo-visits-italys-land-of-fires-as-families-seek-justice-for-children-lost-to-toxic-waste-national-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/19035\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo visits Italy’s ‘Land of Fires’ as families seek justice for children lost to toxic waste | National News"},"content":{"rendered":"

ACERRA, Italy (AP) \u2014 Families living in a toxic-waste polluted area around Naples<\/a> were preparing to meet Pope Leo XIV<\/a> during his pastoral visit on Saturday, carrying with them years of grief, anger and hopes for justice after losing children to cancer linked to a multi-billion mafia racket of dumping toxic waste.<\/p>\n

The visit to the so-called Terra dei Fuochi, or Land of Fires, comes on the eve of the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis\u2019 big ecological encyclical Laudato Si (Praised Be), and indicates Leo\u2019s interest in carrying on his predecessor\u2019s environmental agenda.<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ACERRA, Italy (AP) \u2014 Families living in a toxic-waste polluted area around Naples were preparing to meet Pope…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2662,2036,318,13931,240,1139,6344,5,13930,2787,1100,7062,243],"class_list":["post-19035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-cancer","tag-children","tag-courts","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-health","tag-human-rights","tag-italy","tag-italy-pope-acerra-visit-toxic-waste-lands","tag-pollution","tag-religion","tag-waste-management","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}