Leo XIV, the First Pope from the United States

Francis gave his blessing from the loggia of St Peter’s on Easter Sunday, 20 April 2025, and died in the Vatican the next morning (Holy See, Biography of Pope Francis closing paragraphs). The conclave began on 7 May, and on 8 May the cardinals elected Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who chose the name Leo XIV (Holy See, Biography of Pope Leo XIV ‘Election to the Apostolic See’). The Holy See’s biography calls him the 267th successor of Peter, the first pope from the United States of America and the first Augustinian pope (Holy See, Biography of Pope Leo XIV ‘Election to the Apostolic See’).

Prevost was born in Chicago on 14 September 1955, entered the Order of Saint Augustine in 1977 and was ordained a priest in 1982 (Holy See, Biography of Pope Leo XIV opening section). He went to the order’s mission in Peru in 1985, worked there, with one short break, until 1999, and was prior general of the Augustinians from 2001 to 2013 (Holy See, Biography of Pope Leo XIV ‘Missionary Ministry in Peru’ and ‘Episcopal Ministry’). Francis sent him back to Peru in 2014 to the diocese of Chiclayo, of which he became bishop the next year, when he also took Peruvian citizenship (Holy See, Biography of Pope Leo XIV ‘Missionary Ministry in Peru’ and ‘Episcopal Ministry’). In 2023 Francis called him to Rome as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and made him a cardinal (Holy See, Biography of Pope Leo XIV ‘Service in the Roman Curia’).

His first words from the loggia were “Peace be with you all!” (Leo XIV, First Blessing (8 May 2025)). He spoke of a peace “unarmed and disarming”, thanked Francis, and called himself “an Augustinian, a son of Saint Augustine” (Leo XIV, First Blessing (8 May 2025)). He greeted his former diocese of Chiclayo in Spanish, and said that the church wants to be a synodal church that seeks peace and is close to those who suffer (Leo XIV, First Blessing (8 May 2025)).

Two days later he told the cardinals that he wished to continue on the path the church has followed since the Second Vatican Council, as Francis had set it out in Evangelii gaudium (Leo XIV, Address to the College of Cardinals (10 May 2025)). He had chosen his name, he said, mainly because Leo XIII addressed the social question in the first great industrial revolution, and the church now faces another, with developments in artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for human dignity, justice and labour (Leo XIV, Address to the College of Cardinals (10 May 2025)).

At the Mass that opened his pontificate on 18 May he called love and unity the two dimensions of the mission Jesus entrusted to Peter (Leo XIV, Homily at the Beginning of the Pontificate (18 May 2025)). Peter, he said, must shepherd the flock without yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, and he wished the church’s first great desire to be for unity, on a path walked also with “our sister Christian churches” (Leo XIV, Homily at the Beginning of the Pontificate (18 May 2025)).