Vatican City
Robert Prevost, an missionary who spent his career ministering in Peru and took over the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops, was elected the first pope from the United States in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. Prevost, a 69-year-old member of the Augustinian religious order, took the name Leo XIV.
In his first words as Pope Francis’ successor, uttered from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, Leo said, “Peace be with you,” and emphasised a message of peace, dialogue and missionary evangelization.
He wore the traditional red cape of the papacy — a cape that Francis had eschewed on his election in 2013.
Prevost had been a leading candidate for the papacy except, but there had long been a taboo against a US pope, given the country’s geopolitical power already wielded in the secular sphere. But Prevost, a Chicago native, was seemingly eligible because he’s also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
