From Pope Francis to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, this 12 months noticed the deaths of some important figures in world affairs. Overseas Coverage thought-about their lives and legacies with in-depth evaluation and commentary.
Under are 5 notable obituaries from 2025.
From Pope Francis to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, this 12 months noticed the deaths of some important figures in world affairs. Overseas Coverage thought-about their lives and legacies with in-depth evaluation and commentary.
Under are 5 notable obituaries from 2025.
1. Jean-Marie Le Pen Embodied France’s Darkish Facet
By Michele Barbero, Jan. 7
“In February 1984, Jean-Marie Le Pen appeared for the primary time on France’s largest political TV present, L’Heure de Vérité (The Hour of Reality),” Paris-based journalist Michele Barbero writes, and reporters requested about “the avowed antisemites and former SS members who stuffed his social gathering’s ranks” and “his help for the dictatorships of Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet.”
However in Barbero’s telling, these efforts to show Le Pen’s darkest views fell flat. As a substitute, tons of of individuals lined up the subsequent day exterior the Nationwide Entrance social gathering’s places of work, and “[a] populist star was born.”
Barbero follows Le Pen’s journey alongside the suitable limits of French politics. Le Pen confirmed simply how far proper European opinion might go, however his social gathering’s largest success solely got here after its founder was expelled as a part of his daughter’s post-fascist makeover. As Barbero concludes, “Jean-Marie Le Pen is useless, however his heirs are doing simply superb.”
2. Pope Francis Led Catholics By way of a Time of Disaster
By Christopher White, April 21
“In his first public look, Pope Francis appeared on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica carrying a easy white cassock as a substitute of the standard, lavish pink velvet mozzetta—a transparent sign {that a} new period had begun,” Vatican correspondent Christopher White writes. “He appeared to revel within the shock he prompted, wryly remarking that his brother cardinals had gone to the ‘ends of the earth’ to seek out him.”
White discusses Francis’s rise and affect, together with his efforts to confront the church’s historical past of sexual abuse and to construct a church “for the poor.” He gives a private image of the Argentine pope, displaying his humility and, at occasions, stubbornness. Francis “shunn[ed] the trimmings of energy,” White writes. “However whereas such gestures hinted on the extra substantial reforms he dreamed of attaining, these modifications stay incomplete.”
3. Uruguay’s José Mujica Aimed to Change the World
By Guillermo Draper, Could 13
Former Uruguayan President José Mujica attends a presentation of the Emmaus Worldwide poverty report in Montevideo on Could 13, 2022.Pablo Porciuncula / AFP through Getty Photos
Writer and journalist Guillermo Draper chronicles José Mujica’s rise from armed left-wing guerilla to elected president of Uruguay, then reveals him wrestling with the contradictions of energy. “Mujica’s life journey took many sudden turns—he escaped jail twice and got here perilously near loss of life on a minimum of one event—however he ultimately turned considered one of South America’s extra revered nationwide leaders,” he writes.
Draper ends with Mujica’s personal reflection that “[t]right here is nothing like democracy. Once I was younger, I didn’t assume like that, it’s true. I made a mistake. However right this moment I combat for it.”
4. Regardless of Good Intentions, Muhammadu Buhari Failed Nigeria
By Ebenezer Obadare, July 14
“Muhammadu Buhari … was considered one of two leaders of Nigeria, together with Olusegun Obasanjo, to rule the nation each as army dictator and as civilian president. He was a human rights catastrophe within the first function and largely inept within the second,” writes Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow on the Council on Overseas Relations.
Obadare gives an uncompromising judgment on Buhari’s legacy, arguing that as dictator, even when he displayed a “germ of fine intention,” it resulted in unrelenting repression. As president, Buhari proved unable to sort out crime, poverty, and a rising Boko Haram insurgency. His failures, Obadare concludes, supply “proof that good intentions and proclamations of ethical rectitude, whereas fascinating, will not be sufficient.”
5. Dick Cheney, Architect of the Conflict on Terrorism, Dies
By Jeffrey A. Engel, Nov. 4
“Delicate-spoken and supremely assured in his personal judgment, [Dick] Cheney’s profession epitomized the transformational potentialities—and crippling anxieties—of his nation’s ever-evolving function on the planet,” Jeffrey A. Engel, a historian at Southern Methodist College, writes in an obituary of the previous U.S. vice chairman.
Cheney “embodied Washington’s fearful and aggressive response to the 9/11 terrorist assaults, and finally, in pursuit of good safety in a chaotic world, helped orchestrate the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq that certainly ranks among the many worst strategic selections in U.S. historical past,” he writes.
Engel appears to be like again at how Cheney climbed the rungs of energy in Washington earlier than assessing his function as vice chairman. He finally gives a harsh verdict on Cheney’s religion in torture, disregard for the legislation, and failure to anticipate the nightmare that he unleashed in Iraq.
