Pope Leo XIV, born in Chicago, is the first American pontiff

Robert Francis Prevost, who was elected the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday and took the name Pope Leo XIV, is the first pope from the United States.

The decision from the 133 voting cardinals, which arrived in a plume of white smoke at the end of their second day of voting inside the secrecy of the Sistine Chapel, defied long-standing belief that church leaders would never select a pope from a global superpower that already has considerable influence in world affairs.

Taking the name Leo XIV, the immediate successor to Pope Francis has the potential to shake up the global Catholic power structure.

As an American, he is uniquely positioned to stand in contrast to the energized conservative Catholicism in his home country and has pushed back forcefully against the militant vision of Christian power that the Trump administration has elevated.

Despite his American roots, the Chicago-born polyglot, 69, is viewed as a churchman who transcends borders. He served for two decades in Peru, where he became a bishop and a naturalized citizen, then rose to lead his international religious order. Under Francis, he held one of the most influential Vatican posts, running the office that selects and manages bishops globally.

That made him an attractive choice to the Roman Curia, the powerful bureaucracy that governs the church and, after frequently experiencing reprimands and upheavals from Francis, wanted someone who knew and appreciated the institution.

A member of the Order of St. Augustine, he shares Francis’ commitment to helping the poor and migrants. He told the Vatican’s official news website last year that “the 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, to suffer with them, and to look for ways that he can better live the gospel message in the midst of his people.”

Often described as reserved and discreet, he likely will depart stylistically from Francis as pope. Supporters believe he will most likely continue the consultative process started by Francis to include laypeople in some meetings with bishops.

In a conclave with ideological divides between those who wanted to continue Francis’ inclusive but at times provocative agenda and those who preferred to return to a more conservative path focused on doctrinal purity, Leo XIV likely represented a balanced alternative.

“He’s not a grandstander,” said the Rev. Mark R. Francis, a former classmate of Prevost, who runs the American arm of the Clerics of St. Viator, a religious order, in Chicago.

“He is a very balanced, measured kind of person who deals well with crisis in a certain sense,” said Francis. “It doesn’t fluster him. He thinks things through and offers very stable leadership.”

Prevost has spent much of his life outside the United States. Ordained in Rome in 1982 at age 27, he received a doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also in Rome. In Peru, he was a missionary, parish priest, teacher and bishop. As the Augustinians’ leader, he visited orders around the world, and he speaks Spanish and Italian.

Pope Francis sought to expand the geographical diversity of the church’s hierarchy and named many new cardinals, some from countries that had never had one before. Francis gave Prevost his red hat in 2023, making him one of the more recent members of the College of Cardinals that elected him.

A diplomatic treaty required that he be naturalized as a citizen of Peru before he could become bishop in Chiclayo, a city in the northwestern part of the country. During his time as bishop in Chiclayo, he frequently visited far-flung communities.

He incorporated laypeople into pastoral social work, said Yolanda Díaz, a teacher and member of the church in Chiclayo. “Instead of thinking of pastoral work as people going to church,” she said, “he wanted the church to go to the people.”

Sister Dianne Bergant, who taught him in Bible classes at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where he received a masters in divinity in 1982, said he was a quiet “A student.” She said that when he was made a cardinal decades after he had been a student in her class, he responded immediately to a congratulatory email she sent him, thanking her for helping him in his theological development.

Leo XIV may not be as openly welcoming in tone to LGBTQ+ people as his predecessor, who famously said, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about gay clerics.

In a 2012 address to bishops, before Francis’ oft-cited words, Prevost lamented that Western news media and popular culture fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel.” He cited the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

As bishop in Chiclayo, he opposed a government plan to add teachings on gender in schools. “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist,” he told local news media.

Prevost, like many of the others who ultimately elected him, has drawn criticism over his dealings with priests accused of sexual abuse.

In Chicago, advocates for victims of sexual abuse say that his office did not warn a nearby Catholic school that a priest who church leaders determined had abused young boys for years was sheltered in a monastery nearby, starting in 2000. As head of the Midwestern order of Augustinians at the time, Prevost would have approved the priest’s move to the monastery.

Friends say he is laid-back and humble, dropping by the Augustinian monastery in Rome to eat with priests in the order and always washing his own dishes, said the Rev. Alejandro Moral Antón, Prevost’s successor as Augustinian leader in Rome.

The Rev. Michele Falcone, 46, a priest in the Order of St. Augustine previously led by Prevost, said his mentor and friend had a collaborative leadership style and could be flexible depending on the context. He might wear highly formal vestments for an imperial Mass while dressing more casually for a local parish.

He is known to play a game of tennis and is a fan of baseball, explaining the rules to some of his Italian friends and fellow Augustinians.

In recent years, the Catholic archdiocese in Chicago, led by Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, became an important region of support for Francis’ agenda for the church.

Chicagoans immediately rejoiced at the news that the first American pope was a native of their city. Father William Lego, the pastor of St. Turibius Church in Chicago, knew the new pope when they were young seminarians.

“I think my classmate just got it,” he said, sounding stunned, from his office. “They picked a good man. He always had that sense of being conscious of the poor and trying to help them.”

When his name was first announced in the square, many in the crowd were completely perplexed. “Not Italian?” several said, and one man replayed the announcement he had captured on his phone to see if he could hear the name.

Behind him, Nicole Serena, 21, an Italian American studying marketing in Rome, said, “I think an American pope just got elected.”

Benjamin Smith 20, from Crosby, Minnesota, said he had never heard of Prevost. “But this is so awesome,” said Smith, an exchange student studying theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas, where the cardinal received his doctorate. “I’m so excited,” Smith said.

In Peru, Father Pedro Vásquez, 82, a priest in Chiclayo, where Prevost served as archbishop, was so excited, he said that “my heart is going to fail me!”

“I’m going to faint!” he said, “Oh, my god, oh, my god!”