Cardinals have elected the first American pope as the leader of the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69, a Chicago native, has been announced as Pope Francis’ successor. He will take the name Leo XIV.
Prevost is also a Peruvian citizen, and previously served as the Archbishop of Chiclayo, Peru.
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The new leader of 1.4 billion Catholics is a member of the Augustinians and was previously a missionary in Peru before becoming a naturalized citizen there in 2015. He is the youngest pope to be elected since Pope John Paul II, and is widely seen as being part of the church’s progressive wing.
A polyglot who speaks English, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese and has spent much of life outside of America, an important aspect of Prevost’s papal candidacy was his potential to transcend borders, according to The New York Times.
Prevost was born in Chicago in 1955 and ordained in 1982, at age 27. He holds degrees from Villanova University, Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union, and the Roman Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas.
In 2023, Pope Francis named Prevost to lead a powerful office of Vatican bishops who advise on the appointments of new bishops across the world.
President Donald Trump, who had jokingly endorsed the idea of an American pope—but also suggested it should be him—took to Truth Social to congratulate Prevost.
“Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just named Pope,” Trump wrote. “It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
The Times reported that supporters of Prevost’s candidacy were pitching him as a more moderate successor to Pope Francis.
While he aligns ideologically with his predecessor in terms of his advocacy for the poor and immigrants, he will bring a more reserved style, according to the Times.
“He does not have excesses,” Rev. Michele Falcone, a priest who served under Prevost, told the Times of his mentor earlier this week. “Blessing babies, yes. Taking them in his arms, no.”
Prevost also diverges from Francis, who died at 88 last month, in his reluctance to embrace gay people.
In a 2012 speech, he criticized Western media for encouraging a “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel,” including the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children,” according to the Times.
Prevost’s tenure in the church has not been without scandal. He has faced allegations that he protected priests accused of sexual abuse both in Chicago and Peru.
While in Chicago in the early 2000s, Prevost allowed an Augustinian priest with credible allegations of child sex abuse to transfer to a monastery after he was suspended from serving the public. Advocates have claimed that Prevost failed to warn a nearby Catholic school about Prevost’s presence, the Times reported.
During a nearly decade-long stint as a bishop in Peru from 2014 to 2023, two women accused Prevost of mishandling an investigation into sexual abuse they said they experienced at the hands of a priest, which occurred well before Prevost arrived, according to the Times.
However, Prevost’s supporters argue that these allegations are the product of a smear campaign by Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a conservative Catholic group that Francis dissolved earlier this year after a Vatican investigation uncovered instances of sexual abuse and financial mismanagement.
While Trump was quick to embrace the American pope, it’s worth noting that just weeks ago Prevost called out Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, for misinterpreting the theological concept of ordo amoris, or order of love, which states that love for God should be at the center and love for others radiates outwards.
“JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” Prevost wrote on X in February, quoting the headline of a National Catholic Reporter story criticizing Vance. The VP had tried to invoke the concept of ordo amoris to justify the Trump administration’s deportations.
This didn’t stop Vance from, like his boss, congratulating Prevost on his assumption of the papacy.
“Congratulations to Leo XIV, the first American Pope, on his election!” Vance wrote Thursday. “I’m sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians will pray for his successful work leading the Church. May God bless him!”
