Pope Leo XIV has cast a mail-in ballot for the November midterm elections in Illinois, the Vatican said on Friday, continuing his longstanding practice of voting in U.S. elections even when living abroad.
“The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes,” a Vatican statement said.
Pope Leo may be the first pope to vote in a national election, according to Vatican experts. A historian, Giovanni Maria Vian, the former director of the Vatican newspaper, said that he could not think of any pope who had voted in recent memory.
Roberto Rusconi, a church historian, said that an Italian pope would have had to go to a polling place in Italy, and he had no memory of that ever happening.
Elisabetta Piqué, who wrote a biography of Pope Francis, said that as far as she knew, Francis had never voted in an Argentine election during his 12-year papacy. And Polish and German reporters who write about the Vatican were equally stumped, saying that they did not think that either John Paul II, who was Polish, or Benedict XVI, who was German, had voted in their national elections once they had become pontiffs.
American citizens who live abroad remain eligible to vote, and Pope Leo, who was born in Chicago and raised in the small suburb of Dolton, Ill., regularly cast absentee ballots in Illinois after moving abroad to Peru and Rome.
Pope Leo has long used a family home in Will County, in the Chicago area, as an address. County records indicate that the pope requested a mail-in ballot in Illinois on Oct. 4, and the ballot was mailed on Oct. 6. The ballot has not yet been received in Illinois, records show.
Pope Leo has voted in at least 10 general elections since 2000, according to state and local records, including by absentee ballot for the 2024 presidential election. Voters in primary elections in Illinois may choose any party’s ballot at the polls, and Pope Leo has varied in his selection, picking Democratic ballots years ago and Republican ones more recently.
Illinois election guidelines allow mail-in ballots to be counted even if they arrive late. Ballots must be postmarked by Nov. 3, but they can arrive anytime in the two weeks after Election Day.
The Chicago Sun-Times first reported that the pope had requested a ballot for the midterm elections.
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