Rome, 15.07.24. Trisha Thomas Photo: Victor Sokolowicz

TRISHA THOMAS

Journalist, Producer, VJ

Thomas covers events throughout Southern Europe, Italy, and the Vatican for The Associated Press based in Rome.
People attend a rosary prayer service held for the health of Pope Francis in St Peter's Square at The Vatican, Monday, Feb. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Pope Francis shows slight improvement and resumes some work, while still critical, Vatican says
 
Leslie Voltaire, the president of Haiti's Transition Council, talks during an interview with the Associated Press in Rome, Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Haitian leader says the Trump administration’s plans will be ‘catastrophic’ for his country
 
This is a locator map for Libya with its capital, Tripoli. (AP Photo)
Armed men in speedboats make off with women and children when a migrants’ dinghy deflates off Libya
 
This is a locator map for Sudan with its capital, Khartoum. (AP Photo)
US envoy sees no ‘political appetite’ among Sudan’s combatants to end the country’s devastating war
 
A small pool is seen in front of the Trevi Fountain to allow tourists to throw their coins in it, as the fountain has been emptied to undergo maintenance work that it is expected to be completed by the end of the year, in Rome, Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Tourists toss coins over a makeshift pool as Rome’s Trevi Fountain undergoes maintenance
 
From left, Ralph Fiennes, director Edward Berger and Sergio Castellitto pose on the red carpet before the screening of the movie "Conclave" at the 19th Rome Film Festival, in Rome, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
A thriller about electing a pope draws crowds at the Rome Film Festival near the Vatican
 
FILE - A World Food Programme (WFP) truck backs up to load food items from a recently landed UN helicopter, in Yida camp, South Sudan, Sept. 14, 2012. (AP Photo/Mackenzie Knowles-Coursin)
UN warns some 25 million Sudanese risk famine without more donations
 
A Palestinian woman sits next to sacks of flour outside the UN Relief and Works Agency, (UNRWA) aid distribution station in Gaza City, June 20, 2007. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra, file)
UN food agency intensifies calls for Gaza cease-fire after staff come under fire
 
Judge Maria Francesca Mariano is escorted by plain clothes police as she arrives at the Apollo Theatre in Lecce, Italy, before the performance of her latest play "Your Honor, on the side of the guilty", Monday, May 20, 2024. Mariano is living under 24 hour police escort after receiving death threats. In July 2023 Mariano issued the arrest warrants for 22 members of the Lamendola Clan accused of mafia association, drug trafficking, attempted homicide, possession of illegal weapons. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
In Italy’s Puglia region, women take the lead in challenging the local mafia at great personal risk
 
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani speaks during an interview with The Associated Press as he arrives for a G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in the Italian southern island of Capri, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. The Group of Seven foreign ministers are meeting on the Italian resort island of Capri, with soaring tensions in the Mideast and Russia's continuing war in Ukraine topping the agenda. The meeting runs April 17-19. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
G7 ministers eye targeted sanctions on Iran and a message of restraint for Israel at Italy meeting
 
Mamadou Kouassi, a migrant who made the journey from his native Ivory Coast to Italy in 2006, reads a passage of a public speech, known as 'I Have a Dream', that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, from a poster hanging in a migrant center in Castel Volturno, southern Italy, where Kouassi now dedicates his life to working with migrants, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024. Kouassi's odyssey through Africa inspired the movie Io Capitano (Me Captain) to Italian director Matteo Garrone and is among the nominees for the 2024 96th Academy Awards in the International Feature Film category. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
Migrant’s 3 brutal years trying to reach Italy inspired the Oscar-nominated film ‘Io Capitano’
 
A detail of a fresco showing a sea battle framed in Pompeii red topped by a basket and a mask that decorates the living room of house of the Vetti, in one of the wealthiest homes in Pompeii, the House of the Vetti, in the Pompeii archeological site, Thursday, Dec. 7, 2023. A new project in Pompeii is combining traditional dyeing techniques with colorful frescoes, a historic reconstruction of a garden with Roman-era plants and the study of a steamy workshop where slaves dyed cloth, to revive the daily life in the ancient city before the eruption. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pompeii’s ancient art of textile dyeing is revived to show another side of life before eruption
 
Carla Segovia, a transgender woman from Argentina, walks out of the Beata Vergine Immacolata parish church in Torvaianica, Italy, Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023. Pope Francis’ recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in this working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable friendship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
For this group of trans women, the pope and his message of inclusivity are a welcome change
 
Italy's Premier Giorgia Meloni, right, and Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama, left, shake hands during a meeting in Rome, Italy, Monday, Nov. 6, 2023. (Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse via AP)
Migration experts say Italy’s deal to have Albania house asylum-seekers follows worrying trend
 
Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference Communication Officer Sheila Pires poses for a portrait at The Vatican, Friday, Sept. 29, 2023. Pires has been invited to take part in the next synod of bishops starting Oct. 4. “I think the church has just come to a point of realization that the church belongs to all of us, to all the baptized,” she says. Of the 365 voting members, only 54 are women and organizers insist the aim is to reach a consensus, not tally votes like a parliament. But the voting reform is nevertheless significant, tangible evidence of Francis’ vision of the Catholic Church as being more about its flock than its shepherds. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
Women’s voices and votes loom large as pope is set to open a Vatican meeting on church’s future
 
Newly elected Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, right, receives his biretta from Pope Francis as he is elevated in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Saturday, Sept. 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)
Pope Francis creates 21 new cardinals who will help him to reform the church and cement his legacy
 
Pope Francis is welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron as arrives at the final session of the "Rencontres Mediterraneennes" meeting at the Palais du Pharo, in Marseille, France, Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023. Francis, during a two-day visit, will join Catholic bishops from the Mediterranean region on discussions that will largely focus on migration. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Francis insists Europe doesn’t have a migrant emergency and challenges countries to open ports
 
Pope Francis holds his pastoral staff, made from recycled wood from broken migrant boats, at the end of a Mass during his visit to the island of Lampedusa, southern Italy, Monday July 8, 2013. Ten years after Pope Francis made a landmark visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa to show solidarity with migrants, he is joining Catholic bishops from around the Mediterranean this weekend in France to make the call more united, precisely at the moment that European leaders are again scrambling to stem the tide of would-be refugees setting off from Africa. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)
Pope goes to Marseille to talk migration, but will Europe listen as it scrambles to stem an influx?
 
Visitors take photos of the Ancient Colosseum, in Rome, Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Italy's culture and tourism ministers Gennaro Sangiuliano vowed to find and punish a tourist who was filmed carving his name and his girlfriend's name in the wall of the Colosseum, a crime that in the past has resulted in hefty fines. Video of the incident went viral on social media, at a time when Romans have already been complaining about hordes of tourists returning to peak season travel this year. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
American who filmed tourist carving name in Colosseum dumbfounded as hunt for culprit intensifies
 
Sister Nathalie Becquart, the first female undersecretary in the Vatican's Synod of Bishops, poses for a photo in front of St. Peter's Square, Monday, May 29, 2023. Becquart is charting the global church through an unprecedented, and even stormy, period of reform as one of the highest-ranking women at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
A high-profile French nun is inspiring hope for Catholic women. But can she really bring change?
 
Pope Francis arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Francis has scar tissue removed, hernia repaired during 3-hour abdominal surgery
 
People watch on a computer monitor the latest Italian Ministry of Tourism nine-million-euro campaign showing Botticelli's Venus depicted as a virtual influencer in Rome, Wednesday, May 3, 203. A nine-million-euro advertising campaign by Italy’s conservative government that has transformed “The Birth of Venus,” painted by Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli in Florence around 1485, into a virtual influencer has met with widespread derision. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Botticelli’s Venus is an ‘influencer’ and Italy is not happy
 
Visitors stand in front of Michelangelo's "David statue" in the Accademia Gallery in Florence, Italy, Tuesday, March 28, 2023. The Florence museum and the city's mayor are inviting parents and students from a Florida charter school to visit and see Michelangelo's sculpture of David. The invitation comes after the school principal was forced to resign following parental complaints that an image of the nude Renaissance masterpiece was shown to a sixth-grade art class. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Visitors flock to see David sculpture after Florida uproar
 
Sonia Sparta poses during a photo shoot for "L'imperfetta (The Imperfect) model agency" in Rome, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023. Sonia, who has a rare skin disorder called hyperpigmentation, which produces dark spots on her face and body, is one of the models for L'Imperfetta (The Imperfect) model agency that represents 'extraordinarily imperfect' women and men of all sizes, heights, ages, genders, backgrounds, and disabilities, people who are difficult to classify into the industry's pre-established standards of beauty. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
AP PHOTOS: ‘Imperfect’ models in Italy redefine beauty
 
Pope Francis meets with a group of the Catholic faithful from the town of Rumbek, who had walked for more than a week to reach the capital, after he addressed clergy at the St. Theresa Cathedral in Juba, South Sudan Saturday, Feb. 4, 2023. Pope Francis is in South Sudan on the second leg of a six-day trip that started in Congo, hoping to bring comfort and encouragement to two countries that have been riven by poverty, conflicts and what he calls a "colonialist mentality" that has exploited Africa for centuries. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
Pope says South Sudan’s future depends on treatment of women
 
Restorer Valentina Piovan works on Vittore Carpaccio's 1502 painting 'The agony in the garden' at the Dalmatian School in Venice, northern Italy, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022. On November 20th, the National Gallery of Washington inaugurated the first retrospective exhibition of Carpaccio’s works outside of Italy. It will run until February 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)
Carpaccio the artist, not the appetizer, now getting his due
 
Ukraine's ambassador to the Vatican, Andrii Yurash, uses his phone prior to the start an interview with the Associated Press at the Vatican, Friday, Dec. 2, 2022. Yurash confirmed that both Ukraine's consulate in Naples and its embassy to Italy received letters, with the one in Naples containing fish eyes. In addition, Yurash said the entrance to his Rome residence was vandalized with what he believed was animal feces on Thursday afternoon. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
Ukraine says animal eyes sent to some embassies, consulates
 
Restorer Elizabeth Wicks works on the "Allegory of Inclination", a 1616 work by Artemisia Gentileschi, in the Casa Buonarroti Museum, in Florence, Italy, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2022. Restorers have begun a six-month project on the "Allegory of Inclination" using modern techniques including x-rays and UV infrared research to go beneath the veils painted over the original to cover nudities and discover the work as Gentileschi painted it. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Artemisia Gentileschi’s 1616 nude to be digitally unveiled
 
Climate protesters splatter Van Gogh in Rome with pea soup
 
People stage a protest on 'International Safe Abortion Day' to ask for more guarantees on the enforcement of the abortion law that they claim is seriously endangered by the high rate of doctors' conscientious objection in the country, in Rome, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Italians march for abortion rights after Meloni victory
 
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