Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69, was on Thursday elected as the first American pope and will be known as Pope Leo XIV, making him the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.
The new leader of the 1.4 billion-strong church was elected through a two-day conclave gathering 133 Roman Catholic cardinals in the Vatican.
US President Donald Trump congratulated Pope Leo on his election and said it ‘is such an honour to realise that he is the first American Pope’.
‘What excitement, and what a Great Honour for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!’ Trump wrote on social media.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote: ‘Congratulations to the entire Catholic Church for the election of the new Pope Leo XIV. May your pontiff contribute to strengthening dialogue and the defence of human rights in a world in need of hope and unity.’
Soon after 6pm local time in Rome, white smoke had poured from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and the great bells of St. Peter’s Basilica tolled after cardinals elected the pope on the second day of their conclave.
The crowd in St. Peter’s Square erupted in cheers, priests made the sign of the cross and nuns wept as the crowd shouted ‘Viva il papa!’ after the white smoke wafted into the late afternoon sky. Waving flags from around the world, tens of thousands of people waited to learn who had won.
The name of the new pope was announced after a top cardinal uttered the words ‘Habemus Papam!’ — Latin for ‘We have a pope!’ — from the loggia of the basilica. The cardinal then read the winner’s birth name in Latin and revealed the name he has chosen to be called.
In his first address to the crowds in St Peter’s Square following his election, Pope Leo XIV called for the world to ‘build bridges’ and for peace for ‘all peoples’.
The new pontiff urged people to ‘build bridges through dialogue, through encounter, to come together as one people, always in peace’, before paying homage to his predecessor, Pope Francis. He also spoke briefly in Spanish (link below) to thank his former diocese in Peru ‘where a loyal people has shared its faith and has given a lot’.
Prevost – now Pope Leo – had been a leading candidate for the papacy, but there had long been a taboo against a US pope, given the country’s geopolitical power already wielded in the secular sphere. But Prevost, a Chicago native, was seemingly eligible because he’s also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
According to reports, Pope Francis clearly had his eye on Prevost and in many ways saw him as his heir apparent.
He brought Prevost to the Vatican in 2023 to serve as the powerful head of the office that vets bishop nominations from around the world, one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church. And in January he elevated him into the senior ranks of cardinals. As a result, Prevost had a prominence going into the conclave that few other cardinals had.
The last pope to take the name Leo was Leo XIII, an Italian who led the church from 1878 to 1903. That Leo softened the church’s confrontational stance toward modernity, especially science and politics and laid the foundation for modern Catholic social thought, most famously with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed workers’ rights and capitalism.
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🔴El papa León XIV se dirige a los fieles en castellano#HabemusPapamRTVE
🔸https://t.co/qQZsy26r62 pic.twitter.com/wZtZuBWtJg
— RTVE Noticias (@rtvenoticias) May 8, 2025
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