American Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the new pope and leader of the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday, the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. Prevost took the name Leo XIV. (Scroll down to watch live coverage from Rome.)
Pope Leo, wearing the traditional red cape of the papacy, appeared on the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica about 70 minutes after white smoke billowed from a chimney atop the Sistine Chapel.
“Peace be with you,” he said in his first words as pope, offering a message of peace and dialogue “without fear.”
Aged 69 and originally from Chicago, Prevost has spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru and became a cardinal only in 2023. He has given few media interviews and rarely speaks in public.
Leo becomes the 267th Catholic pope after the death last month of Pope Francis, who was the first Latin American pope and had led the Church for 12 years and widely sought to open the staid institution up to the modern world.
Prevost, a member of the Augustinian religious order, had been a leading candidate except for his nationality. There had long been a taboo against a U.S. pope, given the geopolitical power already wielded by the United States in the secular sphere.
He, was seemingly eligible also because he’s a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
En español:Hay un nuevo Papa: Humo blanco sale de la Capilla Sixtina; eligen a Prevost como León XIV
Francis clearly had his eye on Prevost and in many ways saw him as his heir apparent. He brought Prevost to the Vatican in 2023 to serve as the powerful head of the office that vets bishop nominations from around the world, one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church. As a result, Prevost had a prominence going into the conclave that few other cardinals have.
Eyes on the chimney
On Thursday, large school groups joined the crowd awaiting the outcome in St. Peter’s Square. They blended in with people participating in preplanned Holy Year pilgrimages and journalists from around the world who have descended on Rome to document the election.
“The wait is marvelous!” said Priscilla Parlante, a Roman.
“We are hoping for the white smoke tonight,” said Pedro Deget, 22, a finance student from Argentina. He said he and his family visited Rome during the Argentine pope’s pontificate and were hoping for a new pope in Francis’ image.
“Francis did well in opening the church to the outside world, but on other fronts maybe he didn’t do enough. We’ll see if the next one will be able to do more,” Deget said from the piazza.
The Rev. Jan Dominik Bogataj, a Slovene Franciscan friar, was more critical of Francis. He said if he were in the Sistine Chapel, he’d be voting for Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem who is on many papal contender lists.
“He has clear ideas, not much ideology. He’s a direct, intelligent and respectful man,” Bogataj said from the square. “Most of all, he’s agile.”
When white smoke billowed out of the Sistine Chapel chimney signifying the 133 cardinal electors had chosen a new leader for the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church. The great bells of St. Peter’s Basilica tolled and the crowd in St. Peter’s Square erupted in cheers. Priests made the sign of the cross and nuns wept as the crowd shouted, “Viva il papa!”
A long wait on the first ballot
On Wednesday night, the black smoke of the first ballot poured out of the chapel chimney just after 9 p.m., about 4.5 hours after the cardinals filed into the Sistine Chapel to take their oaths at the start of the conclave.
The late hour prompted speculation about what took so long: Did they have to redo the vote? Did someone get sick or need translation help? Did the papal preacher take a long time to deliver his meditation before the voting began?
“They probably need more time,” said Costanza Ranaldi, a 63-year-old who traveled from Pescara in Italy’s Abruzzo region to the Vatican.
After the initial inconclusive vote Wednesday evening, a further two votes followed on Thursday morning.
The cardinals returned to the Sistine Chapel at 4 p.m. Rome time and at around 6:08 p.m. the white smoke emerged.
Some of the cardinals had said they expected a short conclave. But if recent history is any guide, it will likely take a few rounds of voting to settle on the 267th pope.
For much of the past century, the conclave has needed between three and 14 ballots to find a pope. John Paul I — the pope who reigned for 33 days in 1978 — was elected on the fourth ballot. His successor, John Paul II, needed eight. Francis was elected on the fifth in 2013.
The voting process
The voting follows a strict choreography, dictated by church law.
Each cardinal writes his choice on a piece of paper inscribed with the words “Eligo in summen pontificem” — “I elect as supreme pontiff.” They approach the altar one by one and say: “I call as my witness, Christ the Lord who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who, before God, I think should be elected.”
The folded ballot is placed on a round plate and tipped into a silver and gold urn. Once cast, the ballots are opened one by one by three different “scrutineers,” cardinals selected at random who write down the names and read them aloud.
The scrutineers, whose work is checked by other cardinals called revisers, then add up the results of each round of balloting and write them on a separate sheet of paper, which is preserved in the papal archives.
As the scrutineer reads out each name, he pierces each ballot with a needle through the word “Eligo.” All the ballots are then bound together with thread, and the bundle is put aside and burned in the chapel stove along with a chemical to produce the smoke.
By NICOLE WINFIELD, The Associated Press
Giada Zampano, Helena Alves and Vanessa Gera with the Associated Press and Reuters News Agency contributed to this report.
