CARDINAL Robert Francis Prevost was elected the 267th Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church on May 9, taking the name Leo XIV and breaking new ground as the first pope from the United States and the Augustinian order.
A white plume of smoke exited the Sistine Chapel’s chimney on Friday midnight (Manila time), a signal from the 133 cardinal-electors that their work was done, and that the next successor of St. Peter has been chosen.
Cardinal Dominique Mamberti stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s nearly an hour later and declared, “Habemus papam!” (We have a pope!), announcing Prevost’s election as the Church’s new leader.
Donning his red mozzetta, the pope held back tears as he waved to the throng of Catholics.
He expressed in his inaugural speech his gratitude to his late predecessor, Pope Francis, and called on Catholics to remain steadfast in building bridges and embracing peace.
He also delivered his first traditional Urbi et Orbi (To the City and to the World) blessing.
“Christ precedes us. The world needs his light. Humanity needs Him as the bridge to be reached by God and his love,” the pope said. “Help us too, then each other, to build bridges, with dialogue, with encounter, uniting all of us to be one people always at peace. Thank you, Pope Francis!”
“We want to be a synodal Church, a Church that walks together, a Church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always tries to be close, especially to those who suffer,” he continued.
His regnal name takes from Pope Leo XIII, whose renewed focus on workers’ rights, emphasized by his landmark 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (Of New Things), earned him the moniker, the “Social Pope.”
Prevost was born on Sept. 14, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois, to parents of French, Italian, and Spanish descent. He was ordained a priest in 1982 after earning his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Villanova University in Philadelphia and a master’s of divinity from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
He completed his doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, the top Dominican higher education institution that has produced the likes of Pope St. John Paul II and the Venerable Fulton Sheen.
Prevost was made cardinal by Pope Francis in 2023 and was later appointed head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, one of the Curia’s biggest departments. He also served as president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
He was elevated to the high-ranking cluster of cardinal-bishops in 2025.
Prevost served as prior general of the Order of St. Augustine from 2001 to 2013. He is the second pope in a row to come from a religious order, after Pope Francis, who was part of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).
Although raised in North America, Prevost spent many years as a missionary, teacher, and parish priest in Peru in Latin America. He acquired Peruvian citizenship in 2015, the same year he was appointed archbishop of Chiclayo in the northwestern part of Peru.
Continuity from Francis?
Many have considered this year’s conclave a turning point for the Church, especially considering the polarizing legacy left by Pope Francis’s vision of a more global, synodal, and diverse Church.
Though seen as more conservative than his predecessor, Prevost is expected to continue much of Pope Francis’s reforms in the global Church.
Prevost shares with Pope Francis the commitment to the poor and migrants. He once played a key role in one of the late pope’s most groundbreaking reforms that added three women to the voting bloc that decides which bishop nominations to forward to the pope.
A close friend of Prevost, Fr. Mark Francis, told Reuters that the new pontiff is a “firm supporter” of Pope Francis’s papacy and pastoral approach.
In an interview with Vatican News in October 2024, Prevost said, “A bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom, but rather called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them and to suffer with them.”
Prevost was elected in the largest and most diverse conclave in Church history, with a total of 133 cardinal-electors from 71 countries participating. It took four ballots and less than 24 hours for them to arrive at the two-thirds plus one majority.
The prospect of an American pope had long been considered unlikely due to the enormous influence the global superpower US already wields.
As he charts the next chapter of the Church, Pope Leo XIV invoked the help of his brother cardinals.
“I also want to thank all my brother cardinals who chose me to be the Successor of Peter and to walk together with you, as a united Church always seeking peace, justice, always trying to work as men and women faithful to Jesus Christ, without fear, to proclaim the Gospel, to be missionaries,” Prevost said.
“I am a son of Saint Augustine, an Augustinian, who said: ‘With you I am a Christian, for you I am a bishop.’ In this sense, we can all walk together toward that homeland that God has prepared for us.”
