Vatican City – Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, the original prefect of Chicago de la Dicastery for bishops under Pope Francis, was elected on May 267 and took the name of Pope Leo XIV.
He is the first North American to be elected Pope and, before the conclave, was the most mentioned American cardinal as a potential successor of Saint-Pierre.
The white smoke poured out from the chimney on the roof of the Sistine Chapel at 6:07 p.m., Rome time and a few minutes later, the bells of the Saint-Pierre basilica began to ring.
About 20 minutes later, the Vatican police group and two dozen members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard walked on Saint-Pierre square. They were quickly joined by the Italian Carabinieri fanfare, a branch of the military police, and by units from the other branches of the Italian army.
As soon as the news started to spread, people from all over Rome ran to reach the tens of thousands who were already in the place for the Smoke watch. The mayor of Rome Roberto Gualtieri was among them.
French cardinal Dominique Mamberti, protodiacre of the Cardinals College, appeared on the central balcony of the Saint-Pierre basilica at 7:12 pm, he said to the crowd: “I announce a great joy. We have a pope (” Habemus papam “),” saying the name of the cardinal in Latin and announcing the name by which it will be called.
Twenty minutes later, the new Pope Leo was released on the balcony, smiling and waving the crowd bearing the white papal support, a mozzetta or a red cape and a red stole to give its first public blessing “Urbi et Orbi” (in the city and the world).
The crowd shouted several times, “Viva il dad” or “Long live the pope” while the eyes of Pope Leo seemed to tear.
“Peace be with you,” were the first words of Pope Leo on the crowd.
“My dear brothers and sisters, it is the first greeting of the risen Christ, the good shepherd who gave his life for the herd of God,” he said, praying that the peace of Christ enters the hearts of people, their families and “all the earth”.
The peace of the resurrected Lord, he said, is “a peace that is not armed and disarming”.
Saying a strong continuity with the papacy of Pope Francis, Pope Leo told the crowd that God “loves us all unconditionally” and that the Church must be open to all.
“We are all in the hands of God,” he said, so “without fear, united, hand in hand with God and with each other, let’s go.”
He thanked the cardinals who elected him, apparently on the fourth conclave ballot, “to be the successor of Peter and to walk with you as a united church which always seeks peace, justice” and together the missionaries of Christ.
To tell the crowd that he was an Augustinian, he quoted St. Augustine, who said: “With you, I am a Christian and for you.”
“Together, we must try to be a mission church, a church that builds bridges and always dialogues, which is always open to receiving everyone like this square with its arms open to everyone, everyone in need,” he said.
The new bishop of Rome has declared to the people of his diocese and the whole Catholic Church: “We want to be a synodal church, a traveling church, a church that always seeks peace, which always seeks charity, which wants to be close to people, especially those who suffer.”
After asking the crowd to recite the hail Marie with him, Pope Leo gave his first solemn blessing.
Cardinals over 80, who were not eligible for entering the conclave, joined the crowd on the square. Among them were the cardinals Seán P. O’malley, the retired archbishop of Boston; Donald W. Wuerl, the retired archbishop of Washington; And Marc Ouellet, retired prefect of the bishops’ congregation.
A long -standing missionary in Peru, the 69 -year -old Pope owns American and Peruvian citizenship.
The Repubblica, the big Italian daily, described it on April 25 as “cosmopolitan and shy”, but also said that it was “appreciated by conservatives and progressives. It has global visibility in a conclave in which little (cardinals) know each other”.
This visibility comes from the fact that as the prefect of the dicastery for the bishops for two years, he played a decisive role in helping Pope Francis to choose the bishops for many Latin-Rite visits and was called to help the hundreds of bishops during their bishops “in all areas of the interval
The new pope was bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, when Pope Francis called him to the Vatican in January 2023.
During a conference at the parish of St. Jude in Chicago in August, the cardinal of the time said that Pope Francis had named him “specifically because he did not want someone from the Roman Curia to assume this role. He wanted a missionary; he wanted someone from the outside; he wanted someone who came with a different perspective.”
In an interview of March 2024 with Catholic News Service, he declared that the decision of Pope Francis in 2022 to appoint three women as full members of the Dicastery, giving them comments on the selection of bishops “contributes significantly to the process of discernment by seeking who we hope to be the best candidates to serve the Episcopal Ministry”.
To dissuade the attitudes of bureaucretism among the bishops, he said: “It is important to find men who are really interested in serving, to preach the Gospel, not only with eloquent words, but rather with the example and the witness they give.”
In fact, said Cardinal, Pope Francis “the most effective” the most effective of clerkism was his “pastor who preaches by gesture”.
In an interview in 2023 with the Vatican News, then Cardinal Prevost spoke of the quality of essential leadership of a bishop.
“Pope Francis spoke of four types of proximity: the proximity of God, with Brother Bishops, to the priests and all the people of God,” he said. “We must not give in to the temptation to live isolated, separated in a palace, satisfied with a certain social level or a certain level within the Church.”
“And we must not hide behind an idea of authority that no longer makes sense today,” he said. “The authority we have is to serve, to accompany the priests, to be pastors and teachers.”
As a prefect of the Dicastery, then Cardinal Prevost was also president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, where almost 40% of world Catholics reside.
Originally from Chicago, he was also anterior general of the Augustinians and spent more than two decades serving in Peru, first as a Augustinian missionary and later as bishop of Chiclayo.
Shortly after having come to Rome to direct Dicasternia, he told Vatican News that the bishops had a special mission to promote the unity of the church.
“The lack of unity is an injury that the Church suffers, very painful,” he said in May 2023. “The divisions and controversies of the Church helps nothing. We, the bishops, must in particular accelerate this movement towards unity, towards communion in the Church.”
In September, a television program in Peru reported on the allegations of three women who declared that planned at the time not acted against a priest who had sexually mistreated them as minors. The diocese firmly denied the accusation, stressing that he personally met the victims in April 2022, withdrew the priest from his parish, suspended him from the ministry and conducted a local investigation which was then transmitted to the Vatican. The Vatican said that there was not enough evidence to proceed, just like the local prosecutor’s office.
Pope Leo was born on September 14, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois. He holds a baccalaureate in mathematics from the University of Villanova managed by the Augustes in Pennsylvania and joined order in 1977, making his solemn wishes in 1981. He holds a diploma in theology of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and a doctorate from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
He joined the Augustinian mission in Peru in 1985 and largely worked in the country until 1999, when he was elected chief of the province based in Chicago des Augustins. From 2001 to 2013, he was precedent general of the World Order. In 2014, Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Chiclayo, in northern Peru, and the Pope also asked him to be an apostolic administrator of Callao, in Peru, from April 2020 to May 2021.
The new pope speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese and can read Latin and German.
