After days of feverish speculation American Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was announced as the 267th leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
He will take the name Leo the 14th.
Leo will be the first pope from the United States that the church has ever seen, and only the second pope from the Americas, after Francis who was from Argentina.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who attended Francis’s funeral last month, congratulated Pope Leo XIV in a post on social media: “It is such an honor to realize that he is the First American Pope,” Trump wrote. “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.”
He will take the name Leo the 14th.
Leo will be the first pope from the United States that the church has ever seen, and only the second pope from the Americas, after Francis who was from Argentina.
U.S. President Donald Trump, who attended Francis’s funeral last month, congratulated Pope Leo XIV in a post on social media: “It is such an honor to realize that he is the First American Pope,” Trump wrote. “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.”