“Peace be with you,” said Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost to a stunned crowd in St Peter’s Square in the Vatican as he became the first American pontiff, taking the name Pope Leo XIV.
The 69-year-old emerged on to a balcony, with tens of thousands of people gathered below, a little more than an hour after white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and the great bells of St Peter’s Basilica tolled to signal the cardinals had come to a decision behind closed doors in their secretive conclave.
There was general surprise among the crowds in St Peter’s Square that the 133 elector cardinals had selected an American pontiff as the 267th pope.
French cardinal Dominique Mamberti announced the new pope to the world from a balcony overlooking the square, declaring, “Habemus Papam.”
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After taking the name Pope Leo XIV, the new pope used his maiden speech to a worldwide audience, among them many of the of 1.4 billion Roman Catholics, to speak of “a united church, always seeking peace and justice”.
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“Thank you to my cardinal brothers who chose me to be the successor of Peter and to walk together with you as a united Church searching all together for peace and justice, working together as women and men, faithful to Jesus Christ without fear, proclaiming Christ, to be missionaries, faithful to the gospel,” he told the crowd.
Cardinal Prevost was not considered among the front-runners to become pope, though his appointment by his predecessor Pope Francis as prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops put him in a powerful role of selecting the next generation of bishops.
Before this week’s conclave Cardinal Prevost was being promoted as a possible compromise candidate. His dual citizenship of the US and Peru, where he served for many years, may have eased the concerns of some of the other 132 cardinal electors, who tend to be reluctant to pick a cardinal from a global superpower already well represented in world affairs.
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While considered a centrist overall, he is viewed among some as a progressive, long championing – like Pope Francis before him – the plight of migrants and the poor and the need to protect the environment.
He said last year: “The bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom.”
He is also the first Augustinian pope and spent much of his clerical life in Peru before becoming a cardinal and prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops in 2023. Before that he had been twice elected prior general of the Augustinians.
He was born in Chicago in September 1955. His father, Louis, was of French and Italian descent while his mother, Mildred, had a Spanish background. He has two brothers, Louis Martín and John Joseph.
A graduate of Villanova University in Pennsylvania, he also studied canon law at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese.
He also supported Pope Francis’s change in allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion but is believed to have been less enthusiastic about his predecessor’s authorisation of same-sex blessings in 2023.
In 2012, he said he regretted that popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel”, giving the homosexual lifestyle as an example and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children”.
He has also opposed the ordination of women, either as priests or deacons. Where dealing with clerical abuse cases is concerned, he has had his critics, but also some stout defenders.
His choice of the name Leo XIV may indicate an admiration for his predecessor, Leo XIII, who died aged 93 in 1903 as the oldest pope in history. Leo XIII was the pope who, in 1891, issued what is regarded as the foundational document of all modern Catholic social teaching, the encyclical Rerum Novarum.
Subtitled “On the Conditions of Labour”, it addressed relief of “misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class”.
President Michael D Higgins extended his “warmest congratulations to Cardinal Robert Prevost on his election as successor to Pope Francis”.
“I welcome his statement that he is prepared to lead with compassion, wisdom and an enduring commitment to the values of peace, justice and human dignity,” President Higgins added.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said: “The scenes of great joy and celebrations in St Peter’s Square are a reflection of the hopes and goodwill felt by people of the Catholic faith from all around the world towards the new pope.”
