You need an Apple developer account to even make software for iOS. Alternate app stores are distributed on the web, not Apple’s App Store. Since an alternative app store is an iOS app, Apple banning Epic’s developer account means they’re banned from making one.

Third party browser & JavaScript engine + ability to install web apps on the Home screen = third party app store that doesn’t have to pay Apple’s fees.

When Apple could force everyone to use Apple’s WebKit, web apps didn’t matter as much as Apple could limit WebKit features to push people to the App Store. E.g. it took ages to get push notifications on WebKit. If Google and Mozilla are free to make whatever improvements to their browser engines, the need to have native apps on the phone decreases considerably.

Most of the time the pope is no different from any other Catholic. He has a lot of respect by virtue of his post, but what he says is not the word of God.

This changes if he speaks “ex cathedra” (Latin for “from the chair”, the throne the previous poster is alluding to). Ex cathedra means the pope is defining dogma for all the faithful as the supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church. Think of it as the difference of the US president saying something in a private conversation vs. him issuing an executive order. When the pope speaks ex cathedra, he is considered infallible in the Catholic faith.

Popes rarely speak ex cathedra. Most of Catholic theology is settled, so there is rarely need to clarify anything. The last time it happened was in 1950 about the Assumption of Mary.

Papal (and church council) infallibility does mean that the Catholic Church can never change its mind about things like homosexual marriage and abortion. The Catholic Church says it is Christ’s church on earth, and is protected by the Holy Spirit from error that could lead Christians astray. Saying that they got something as vital as “what is and is not sin” wrong would undermine the church’s entire foundation.

Next step: there’s a good argument to be made that the United States is not a nation. tldr: a nation is a group of people sharing ethnicity, language, culture. The United States is a country united by an idea, not an ethnicity.