Who is the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, first American pontiff in history?

Robert Francis Prevost has been announced as the successor to Pope Francis on Thursday (May 8) after 133 cardinals voted in the Papal Conclave. He becomes the first American pope, taking the papal name Leo XIV. He is a moderate who was close to Pope Francis and spent years as a missionary in Peru.

Pope Leo XIV, 69, was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2023 after being named to head the Dicastery for Bishops, one of the key departments of the Vatican. He has worked as a missionary in Peru.

Given his pastoral bent, global view and ability to navigate the central bureaucracy, Pope Leo XIV had the highest chances among the group of US cardinals of being pope.

He has been called “the least American of the Americans” for his soft-spoken touch by Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

After the death of Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV said there was “still so much to do” in the work of the Church.

“We can’t stop, we can’t turn back. We have to see how the Holy Spirit wants the Church to be today and tomorrow, because today’s world, in which the Church lives, is not the same as the world of ten or 20 years ago,” he told Vatican News last month.

“The message is always the same: proclaim Jesus Christ, proclaim the Gospel, but the way to reach today’s people, young people, the poor, politicians, is different,” he said. 

Hailing from Chicago, Pope Leo XIV attended a minor seminary of the Order of St Augustine in St Louis as a novice. He completed a degree in mathematics from Philadelphia’s Villanova University and received a master’s degree in divinity from Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union in 1982. 

He finished a doctorate degree in canon law in Rome, then joined the Augustinians in Peru in 1985, where he served first of his decade-long missions in that country.

In 1999, he returned to Chicago and was made provincial prior of the Augustinians in the US Midwest. Later, he was made the prior general of the order throughout the world.

He returned to Peru in 2014 when Francis appointed him as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo. Nearly a decade later, he was appointed as head of the dicastery in 2023 after Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet was accused of sexually assaulting a woman and resigned for age reasons. Ouellet’s case was later dropped by the Vatican for insufficient evidence.

Pope Leo XIV also serves as president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.