Cardinals have elected American born Robert Prevost as new Pope for the Roman Catholic faith, following several rounds of voting on Thursday, May 8.2025.
He will go by the name Pope Leo XIV and is the first Pope from America.
Date of Birth: Sept. 14, 1955
Nationality: American and Peruvian
Position: Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops; president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America under Francis
Experience: Archbishop of Chiclayo, Peru; head of the Augustinian religious order
Made a cardinal by: Francis
Francis brought Prevost, 69, 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 has a prominence going into the conclave that few other cardinals have.
One strike against him, however, is that he’s American, and there has long been a taboo against a U.S. pope, given the geopolitical power already wielded by the United States in the secular sphere. But Prevost, a Chicago native, could be a first because he’s also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
The conclave elected a new pope after two days of tense deliberations locked away in the Vatican.
White smoke billowed from the Sistine Chapel on Thursday evening, confirming that a new Pope has been elected to lead the 1.4 billion-member Catholic Church.
The pontiff is the 267th Pope and has become the religious leader of Catholics across the globe after cardinals took around 24 hours to elect their new leader.
