Pope Leo XIV strongly affirmed the rights of the weakest against the ambitions of the powerful during an audience Saturday with exiled refugees from Chagos, the contested Indian Ocean archipelago that is home to the strategic U.S.-U.K. military base, Diego Garcia.

History's first American pope insisted on the right of the Chagossian people to return to their homes and hailed a recent U.K.-Mauritius treaty over the archipelago's future as symbolically important on the international stage. Latest Forecast

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Leo met with a delegation of refugees from Chagos, some 2,000 of whom were evicted from their homes by Britain in the 1960s and 1970s so the U.S. could build a naval and bomber base on the largest of the islands, Diego Garcia.

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