Who is Robert Prevost? First North American pope elected

MSNBC- WHIA

Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of the United States has been elected as the pope of the Catholic Church, taking the name Leo XIV.

Beginning on Wednesday, 133 cardinals gathered to select the new head of the church. To qualify as an elector, a cardinal must be below the age of 80; of the 252 current cardinals, 135 qualify, but two are abstaining. They took only a little more than one day to elect Prevost.

Conclaves typically attract thousands of people to St. Peter’s Square, where they wait for the plume of white smoke to emerge from a chimney at the Sistine Chapel that signals that a new pope has been chosen. This particular conclave has garnered particular interest in part due to an acclaimed 2024 Hollywood film about the intensely secretive event.

In the lead-up to the conclave, there were no clear frontrunners for the papacy, as more than a dozen names were floated as potential contenders in news reports.

The election of the new pontiff follows the death of Pope Francis, who died on April 21, one day after making his last public appearance on Easter Sunday. As pope, Leo XIV will confront the numerous challenges facing the church today, including on issues concerning LGBTQ Catholics, the role of women in the church, Catholicism’s growth in Asia and Africa, and the church’s sordid history of sexual abuse by the clergy.