ROBERT Francis Prevost, 69, became the first pope from the United States on Thursday, picking the papal name Leo XIV after cardinals from around the world elected him leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics.
Even before his name was announced from the balcony of St Peter's Basilica, the crowds below were chanting "Viva il Papa" - Long live the Pope.
He is the first American to fill the role of Pope, although he is considered as much a cardinal from Latin America because of the many years he spent as a missionary in Peru, before becoming a bishop there.
White smoke from the Sistine Chapel had billowed into the sky on the cardinals' second day of voting to announce his election in a secret conclave, while the bells of St Peter's Basilica and churches across Rome rang out.
Born in Chicago in 1955 to parents of Spanish and Franco-Italian descent, Prevost served as an altar boy and was ordained as a priest in 1982. Although he moved to Peru three years later, he returned regularly to the US to serve as a pastor and a prior in his home city.
The new pontiff, who succeeds Argentine reformer Pope Francis, was introduced in Latin with his chosen papal name.
The future Pontiff received his theological education at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. At the age of 27, he was sent by his superiors to Rome to study Canon Law at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum).
In Rome, he was ordained a priest on June 19, 1982, at the Augustinian College of Saint Monica by Archbishop Jean Jadot, then pro-president of the Secretariat for Non-Christians, which later became the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and then the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
Prevost obtained his licentiate in 1984 and the following year, while preparing his doctoral thesis, was sent to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Piura, Peru (1985–1986). In 1987, he defended his doctoral thesis on "The Role of the Local Prior in the Order of Saint Augustine" and was appointed vocation director and missions director of the Augustinian Province of “Mother of Good Counsel” in Olympia Fields, Illinois (USA).
Pope Francis created him Cardinal in the Consistory of September 30 that year and assigned him the Diaconate of Saint Monica. He officially took possession of it on January 28, 2024. – May 9, 2025
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