 The Conclave of Cardinals has chosen Cardinal Robert Prevost as the new Pope who has taken the name as pope Leo XIV.
Cardinal Robert Prevost was born on September 14th, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in the nearby suburb of Dolton. He became a friar of the Order of Saint Augustine in 1977 and was ordained as a priest in 1982. His service includes extensive missionary work in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s, where he served as a parish pastor, diocesan official, seminary teacher, and administrator. Elected prior general of the Order of Saint Augustine from 2001 to 2013, he returned to Peru as Bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023. In 2023, Pope Francis appointed him prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and made him a cardinal the same year. As a cardinal, he emphasized synodality, missionary dialogue, and engagement with social and technological challenges. He also engaged with issues such as climate change, global migration, church governance, and human rights, and expressed alignment with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected pope on May 8, 2025, the second day of the conclave, on the fourth ballot. White smoke appeared from the Sistine Chapel at 18:07 , signifying to the public that a pope had been chosen. A citizen of the United States by birth, Leo XIV is the first pope to have been born in North America, the first to hold Peruvian citizenship (having been naturalized in 2015), the second pope from the Americas (after his predecessor Francis), and the first from the Order of Saint Augustine. His papal name was inspired by Pope Leo XIII, who developed modern Catholic social teaching amid the Second Industrial Revolution. Leo XIV believes the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution, particularly advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, poses "new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice, and labour". Comments are closed.
|