Cardinal Robert Prevost, an American missionary who spent his career ministering in Peru and leads the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops, was elected the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church. Prevost, 69, took the name Leo XIV.
White smoke poured out of the Sistine Chapel chimney Thursday at 6:07 p.m. local time, signaling that a pontiff had been elected to lead the Catholic Church.
From the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, history’s first American pope recalled that he was an Augustinian priest, but a Christian above all, and a bishop, “so we can all walk together.”
He spoke in Italian and then switched to Spanish, recalling his many years spent as a missionary and then archbishop of Chiclayo, Peru.