Cardinal Robert Prevost, whose papal name will be Pope Leo XIV, has become the first North American pope.
The appointment will probably please Donald Trump, as Vatican insiders previously remarked that the US had more than enough geopolitical influence without taking over the papacy.
A Vatican insider said: “He was not one of the obvious candidates, but he knows everybody, he spent 30 years as a missionary, he has languages.
“His time in Peru means he is one of the least ‘American’ of the American cardinals. But he understands America and he can speak to the country, which is important in the Trump era.”
Spent years in Peru
Cardinal Prevost, 69, who was born in Chicago, has an impressive CV.
He spent years in Peru, first as a missionary and then an archbishop.
He is seen as a reformer in the mould of Pope Francis, who sent Cardinal Prevost to run the diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014.
Cardinal Prevost liked the country so much that he acquired Peruvian citizenship in 2015.
He ran that diocese until 2023, when Francis brought him to Rome to be head of the Vatican’s powerful Dicastery for Bishops, in charge of vetting nominations for senior clergy around the world.
Prevost was also president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, a job that kept him in regular contact with the Catholic hierarchy in a region of the world that still counts the most Catholics.
Although he kept a low profile in Rome, he was part of one of the most significant reforms undertaken by Francis: adding three women to the voting bloc that decides which bishop nominations to forward to the pope.
Before his election, it was thought that his comparative youth could count against him because cardinals would not want to elect a pope whose reign could last for two decades or more.
Those concerns were evidently dismissed by a majority of cardinal electors, who have given the Catholic Church the first pontiff from the US, an historic shift.
apnews.com
