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Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost has been elected as the new pope to lead the world’s 1.4bn Catholics.
Prevost, the first American to be pope, is seen as a compromise candidate who could find broad support in a divided Catholic church. He will be known as Pope Leo XIV.
“Peace be with all of you,” Pope Leo told cheering crowds at St Peter’s Square. “I want this salute of peace to enter your heart, reach your families, and all people, wherever they are, and all the peoples, and the whole world.”
In a post on Truth Social, US President Donald Trump said: “Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
Less than an hour after white smoke had billowed over the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, Senior Cardinal Dominique Mamberti came out on to the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica. “Habemus Papam,” he said, confirming to the thousands gathered in the square below that the conclave had chosen a new pontiff.
Prevost, 69, spent decades as a priest teaching and serving in Peru, later administering troubled dioceses and becoming a member of the Peruvian bishops’ conference.
The Chicago native was close to the late Pope Francis, who called him to the Vatican in 2023, and asked him to lead the curia’s influential department for bishop appointments, an assignment that helped him develop networks among the global Catholic leadership.
Analysts say the assignment likely helped Prevost muster the two-thirds majority required to be elected pope.
The American is seen as sharing many of Francis’s ideas about the environment and immigration, ideals that could potentially bring him into conflict with the Trump administration over its hardline anti-migrant policies.
Just before his last illness, Francis wrote a strongly-worded letter to the US Catholic clergy, urging them to stand up against the demonisation of migrants.
At St Peter’s Square, American Catholics — some waving American flags — seemed stunned and elated at Prevost’s surprise elevation to the papal throne.
“We never had an American pope — they said it would never happen in a million years,” said John Sanchez, 27, the American-born son of Colombian immigrants. “It’s like winning the lottery.”
But Sanchez predicted that the pope could “clash with Trump on certain things, definitely with migrants, but not on all things. I hope he works with [the US] too. It’s important to work with all the people”.
Prevost takes the helm of a church wrestling with a sharp decline in attendance in its traditional European heartland, and profound questions of how to keep young people and women engaged in a faith whose leadership is entirely male.
“Every [Catholic] church in every continent has this problem in different ways,” said Massimo Faggioli, a theology professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.
The Holy See faces other challenges too, such as growing concern about its precarious finances, and demands for stronger measures to protect children from sexual abuse by priests.
Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome
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