Before his name was announced from the balcony of the St. Peter Basilica, the masses sang “Viva Il Papa” below – and live the Pope.
Robert Prevost, 69, will be the 267th inmate of the throne of St. Peter and he will be known as Leo XIV.
He is the first American to take on the role of the Pope, even though he is considered a cardinal from Latin America because of the many years he spent as a missionary in Peru before becoming a bishop.
Prevost was born in Chicago in 1955 1955 as the son of Spanish and French-Italian descent. He served as a priest in 1982. Although he moved to Peru three years later, he regularly returned to the USA to serve as a pastor and as a prior in his hometown.
He has a Peruvian nationality and likes to be a figure in memory that worked with marginalized communities and contributed to building bridges.
He spent 10 years as a local pastor and as a teacher at a seminar in Trujillo in the northwest of Peru.
In his first words as Pope, Leo XIV lovingly spoke of his predecessor Francis.
“We still hear the weak but always courageous voice of Pope Francis in our ears, who has blessed us,” he said.
“United and hand in hand with God, let us go together,” he said to cheerful crowds.
He also spoke of his role in the Augustinian Order. He was 30 years old when he moved to Peru as part of a Augustiner mission.
Francis made him for a year after the Pope Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru.
He is known for Cardinals because of its top -class role as a prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Latin America, which has the important task of choosing and monitoring bishops.
He became an archbishop in January 2023 and made him a cardinal within a few months.
When 80% of the cardinals that participated in the conclave were appointed by Francis, it is not so surprising that someone like Prevost was chosen, even if they were recently appointed.
He is seen as a figure that prefers the continuity of Francis’s reforms in the Catholic Church.
It is believed that Prevost has shared Francis’ views of migrants, the poor and the environment.
A former roommate of him, Reverend John Lydon, described Prevost of the BBC as “excluded”, “down -to -earth” and “very concerned about the arms”.
On his personal background, Prevost said before the conclave that he grew up in a family of immigrants.
“I was born in the United States … but my grandparents were all immigrants, French, Spanish … I grew up in a very Catholic family, my two parents were very engaged in the community,” he said.
Although Prevost is an American and the divisions within the Catholic Church will be fully aware of, his Latin American background also represents the continuity after a Pope that comes from Argentina.
The Vatican described him as the second Pope from America after Pope Francis and the first Augustinian pope.
During his time in Peru, he did not escape the scandals of sexual abuse that the church has clouded, but his diocese fervently denied that he was involved in an attempted cover -up.
Before the conclaved, the Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said that during the meetings of the College of Cardinals in the days before the conclusion, she was emphasized with “a prophetic spirit that is able to lead a church that does not close, but knows how to bring into a world, to be led into a world, which cannot be led by a church that is marked by Despair.”
When selecting the name Leo, Prevost described an engagement for dynamic social questions.
The first Pope to use the name Leo, whose papacy ended 461, met Attila the Hun and persuaded him not to attack Rome. The last Pope Leo led the church from 1878 to 1903 and wrote an influential treatise on employee rights.
In his blog, the former Archbishop of Boston Seán Patrick O’malley wrote that the new Pontiff had chosen a name that with the legacy of social justice of Pope Leo XIII, who in a period of epic upheaval in the world, the time of industrial revolution, the beginning of Marxism, and the Widesspread immigration, in a time of epic upheavals and Widesasped immigration was selected.
His LGBT views are unclear, but some groups, including the conservative college of cardinals, believe that he is less inviting for these groups than Pope Francis.
He has shown support for a papal explanation of Francis, which allows blessings for same -sex couples and others in “irregular situations”, although it has been added that the explanation shows the need for bishops to interpret instructions given.
Prevost spoke about climate change last year and said it was time to move “from words to act”.
“Dominion Over Nature” should not be “tyrannical”, he said. He asked humanity to build a “relationship of reciprocity” to the environment.
He also spoke about the commitment of the Vatican for the environment and found the installation of solar collectors in Rome and the introduction of electric vehicles.
He supported Pope Francis’s decision to connect women for the first time the Dicastery for bishops, and gave them contributions to these dates.
“On several occasions, we saw that their view is an enrichment,” he told the Vatican News in 2023.
In 2024 he informed the Catholic intelligence service that their presence “significantly for the distinction procedure in the search for who we hope are the best candidates for the church in the Bishop’s Ministry”.