President Donald Trump celebrated the news that the college of cardinals elected its first American pope, Cardinal Robert Prevost of Chicago, calling the news “a Great Honor for our Country.”
“Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just named Pope,” Trump wrote.
“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!”
Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1955.
Prevost earned his bachelor’s in mathematics from Villanova University in Pennsylvania and went on to receive his diploma in theology from the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago.
He was later sent to Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical Saint Thomas Aquinas University and was ordained as a priest in June 1982. Later in his career, he taught canon law in the seminary in Trujillo, Peru.
While it is often said cardinal electors would always shy away from choosing a pope from the US due to America’s outsized global political influence, Prevost’s long experience in Peru may have mitigated those fears among the electors.
Pope Leo XIV outlined his vision for the Catholic Church as one that “builds bridges” and engages in conversation.
“We have to seek together to be a missionary church. A church that builds bridges and dialogue,” he said in his remarks on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica today.
The new pope also called on people to “show our charity” to others “and be in dialog with love,” according to an English translation.
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