After a one-day, 24-minute conclave, the Catholic Church’s cardinals have named American Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost the new Pope. He will be the 267th Pope and the first American to hold the title. He will take the name Pope Leo XIV.
As white smoke billowed out of the Sistine Chapel and crowds — stretching from St. Peter’s Square to the Tiber River — thronged the streets below, French Cardinal Dominique Mamberti stepped to the balcony and said, “Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus papam,” Latin for “I announce to you a great joy: We have a pope.”
Prevost, 69, was born in Chicago, and before his selection as pope ran the Vatican office that chooses and manages the church’s bishops. Previously, he served for two decades in Peru, where he became a bishop, and holds dual US and Peruvian citizenship. Views-wise, Prevost leans liberal, but potentially not as much so as his predecessor. Though he follows Francis in focusing on the poor and migrants, and is known to be accessible, telling the Vatican’s news office in 2024 that the bishops “[shouldn’t] be [little princes] sitting in [their] kingdom,” it’s unknown if he’ll be as open to LBGTQ+ Catholics as Francis was. The New York Times notes that in a 2012 interview, he expressed disappointment with Western media and popular culture’s “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel,” citing, among other examples, “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families.”
The new pope was selected as pope by a conclave of 133 cardinals, the most ever to gather in a conclave, which was assembled after the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday. When cardinals assemble for a conclave, they swear an oath of secrecy, are not allowed to leave the conclave except under extreme circumstances, and vote until a contender wins a two-thirds majority. After every vote the cast ballots are burned in a stove alongside a color-producing additive. If no candidate clears the two-thirds benchmark, the smoke is black. If they do, the smoke is white.
And, in his first remarks, Leo XIV both thanked his predecessor and said people should be “a single people,” always in peace.
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