VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV, the American Robert Prevost, said “Peace be with you” in his first words as pope, offering a message of peace and dialogue “without fear.”
From the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, history’s first U.S. pope recalled he was an Augustinian priest, but that he was a Christian above all and a bishop. “So we can all walk together,” he said.
He spoke in Italian and then switched to Spanish, recalling his many years spent as a missionary and then archbishop of Chiclayo, Peru.
Prevost, a 69-year-old member of the Augustinian religious order who leads the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops, took the name Leo XIV. He appeared on the loggia of St. Peter’s Square wearing the traditional red cape of the papacy—a cape that Pope Francis had eschewed on his election in 2013.
Prevost had been a leading candidate except for his nationality. There had long been a taboo against a U.S. pope, given the geopolitical power already wielded by the United States in the secular sphere. But Prevost, a Chicago native, was seemingly eligible also because he’s a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
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. As a result, Prevost had a prominence going into the conclave that few other cardinals have.
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 at 6:07 p.m. Waving flags from around the world, tens of thousands of people waited to learn who had won.
