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Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost has been chosen as the new Pope to lead Catholics of 1,400 million in the world.
Prevost, the first American to be a potato, is seen as a commitment candidate who could find broad support in a divided Catholic Church. It will be known as Pope Leo XIV.
“Peace be with all of you,” said Pope Leo to Cheering crowds at St Peter’s Square. “I want this peace of peace to enter your heart, to reach their families and all people, wherever they are, and all peoples and the whole world.”
In a publication about Truth Social, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, said: “Congritions to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. It is an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What emotion and what great Pope.
Less than an hour after the white smoke had undertake on the Sistine Chapel on Thursday, the main cardinal Dominique Mamberti came out on the balcony of the Basilica of San Pedro. “Habemus Papam,” he said, confirming the thousands gathered in the square under that the conclave had chosen a new pontiff.
Premost, 69, spent decades as a priest teaching and serving in Peru, then managing dioceses with problems and becoming a member of the Peruvian Bishops Conference.
The native of Chicago was close to the late Pope Francis, who called him to the Vatican in 2023, and asked him to direct the influential department of the curia for the Bishop appointments, a task that helped him develop among the global the global global the global the global.
Analysts say that the assignment probably helped Prevost gather the two -thirds majority required to be elected Pope.
It is considered that the American shared many of Francis’s ideas about the environment and immigration, ideals that could conflict it with the Trump administration on antimigrants of hard line.
Just before his last illness, Francis wrote a strongly written letter to the Catholic clergy of the United States, urging the issue to face the demonization of migrants.
In St Peter’s Square, American Catholics, some stirred US flags, seemed stunned and euphoric for the surprise elevation of predost to the papal throne.
“We never had an American Pope, they said it would never happen in a million years,” said John Sánchez, 27, an American son of Colombian immigrants. “It’s like winning the lottery.”
But Sánchez predicted that the Pope could “collide with Trump in certain things, definitely with migrants, but not in all things. I hope he works with [the US] also. It is important to work with all people. ”
Prevost takes the helmet of a church struggle with a strong decrease in assistance in its traditional European heart, and deep questions about how to keep young people and women involved in a faith whose leadership is completely masculine.
“Each [Catholic] The church on each continent has this problem in different ways, “said Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology at the University of Villanova in Pennsylvania.
The Holy See also faces other challenges, such as a growing concern for their precarious finances, and demands stronger measures to protect children from sexual abuse by priests.
Additional reports by Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome
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