VATICAN CITY The Roman Catholic Church elected the first American pope in its history, placing its 1.4 billion faithful in the hands of a missionary-turned-Vatican prelate who has been critical of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a 69-year-old native of Chicago, emerged on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica and was introduced to the world as Pope Leo XIV. A throng of more than 100,000 pilgrims, tourists and ordinary Romans filling the square below reacted with surprise at the election of a pope from the U.S.—an event long considered unthinkable.
Delivering his first Urbi et Orbi address to “the city and the world,” Leo positioned himself as a unifying figure for a world beset by conflicts and for the Catholic Church, riven by years of ideological tensions between its progressive and conservative wings.
Paying homage to the inclusive spirit of his predecessor, the late Pope Francis, Leo stressed the importance of “synodality,” or gatherings of bishops and dialogue with laypeople to debate major moral and practical challenges facing the church. That approach, promoted under Francis, caused much anxiety among traditionalist Catholics.
The American’s election signifies that the leadership of the Catholic Church wants to maintain the broad thrust of Francis’ pontificate, including its advocacy for social justice, while also defusing the culture wars that have polarized the church for years. Leo appears to have won the backing of over two-thirds of the voting cardinals after just four ballots, suggesting that he won significant support from a broad ideological and geographical spectrum of prelates.
“Peace be with all of you,” the visibly emotional Pope Leo told the crowd in his first words as pontiff, speaking in Italian.
“We must try together to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges and dialogue, always open, like this square, to receive with open arms everyone who needs our charity, our presence,” Pope Leo said.
He briefly switched from Italian to Spanish to send a warm greeting to the faithful in his former diocese in Peru. He then led the faithful in the Hail Mary prayer.
The choice of Pope Leo XIV upended the longstanding assumption that a cardinal from the U.S. was all but unelectable for the cardinals of a church that has in recent times been inclined to balance against American global power.
However, Leo’s American identity could potentially become an asset as the Vatican navigates a geopolitical landscape that has changed dramatically since President Trump took office.
“It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country,” Trump wrote in a social-media post shortly after Leo was elected, adding: “I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
As a cardinal, Leo has appeared at odds with the nationalist drift of the Trump administration. He publicly corrected Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, over Vance’s use of church teaching to justify the administration’s crackdown on immigration.
Vance had said during a Fox News interview in January: “There is a Christian concept that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”
“JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” the then-Cardinal Prevost wrote in a social-media post in February.
On Thursday Pope Leo Vance said upon his election that millions of American Catholics and other Christians would pray for his successful work.
Any moves that alienate the Trump administration and its supporters, however, also carry risks for the new pope. Conservatives make up a large part of the Catholic Church in the U.S., powering church attendance as well as vocations for the priesthood. The U.S. is among the biggest donors to the Vatican, which is increasingly cash strapped.
For many, Leo’s early invocation of bridge-building on Thursday showed he intends to adhere closely to the stance his predecessor took on immigration. Francis said early this year that Trump’s mass deportation plan “damages the dignity of many men and women.”
Leo worked for years in Latin America, first as a missionary then as Bishop of Chiclayo in northern Peru, giving him a front-row seat to many of the economic forces driving the region’s migrants toward the U.S.
“Make no mistake: this is a pope who, as Bishop of Chiclayo, was wholly committed to the Francis magisterium, and to the keynotes of his pontificate,” said Austen Ivereigh, a former adviser to the late U.K. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor.
Leo’s election was a surprise to many people in the crowd in St. Peter’s Square. Many of them had expected a cardinal better-known to the general public, such as the Italian prelates Pietro Parolin or Matteo Zuppi, to secure election.
“To be honest, I hoped for an Italian,” said Antonio Natale, a university student in Rome. “An American one, it’s something never seen. A new world. It’s beautiful but also strange.”
“At first, I was a bit disappointed,” said Paula Llamas Fernández, a student from Spain who is in Rome on a university exchange program. “I don’t know about this man, so I cannot judge, but for now the speech he gave was good.”
Going into Thursday’s conclave vote that made Prevost the new pope, his chances of winning were just 1% on Polymarket, the popular crypto-based prediction market.
But inside the walls of the Vatican, the cardinal from Chicago established himself among the strongest contenders during the past week as the college of cardinals debated the future of the church.
Many of his peers appreciated his years of missionary work in South America and his record as a bishop in Peru. He also benefited from the strong international network he built up within the church while working as Pope Francis’ chief official for the appointment of bishops in large parts of the world.
Pope Leo faces the challenge of healing a deep rift between the progressive and conservative wings of the Catholic Church. His caution about speaking out on polarizing topics such as priestly celibacy and same-sex blessings may have helped to make him a palatable choice for a spectrum of cardinals, many of whom want to reduce the ideological tensions of recent years.
“He is someone the progressives can feel comfortable with, and that conservatives can feel comfortable with,” said Father Robert Sirico, president emeritus of the Acton Institute, an American faith-based think tank.
“As a compromise candidate, both sides of the present divide can find things they can praise and identify with. I don’t think it resolves the deep debates but it goes a long way,” said Father Sirico.
The choice of the papal name Leo XIV sends “a clear and deft message,” said Vincent Miller, professor of theology at the University of Dayton, Ohio. The new pope has thereby invoked Leo XIII, who reigned in the late 19th century and “who spoke for the working class during the industrial revolution and fought for the rights of the church against authoritarian states,” said Miller.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni noted that the last pope named Leo was the founder of modern Catholic social teaching.
Leo XIII became best known for a 1891 letter, “Rerum Novarum—On the Condition of Labor,” which called for a living wage, reorienting the church as sympathetic to the plight of workers in an unfettered capitalist economy, but also skeptical about socialism.
The name underscores two of the themes the new pontiff emphasized in his first address on Thursday, said Miller: justice and peace.
The news of Leo’s election was as surprising to people in Chicago as it was in Rome.
Gregory Sakowicz, the rector at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral, was giving a woman communion during Thursday’s mass when she told him that Cardinal Robert Prevost was the new pope. Sakowicz was shocked. He thanked the woman, and later shared the news with a tearful church full of roughly 175 attendees. “It was an explosion,” he said. “Nobody was expecting an American.”
Once the shock subsided, a new question emerged, Sakowicz said: Is he a Cubs or White Sox fan?
Sakowicz said he had never met the cardinal, but had heard fond stories over the years. He expects the new pope to be a staunch defender of human rights.
Across town, Old St. Patrick’s Church pastor Pat McGrath said he was astonished by the news, calling it a breath of fresh air. “It’s an affirmation of the American Catholic Church in a way that we’ve never experienced,” he said. “It makes people feel hopeful and proud.”
