World leaders offer Pope Leo XIV wishes for peace and unity.

He takes the name Pope Leo XIV and shares Francis’s dedication to help the poor and migrants. He was once the leader of his religious order, the Augustinians, whose members were called to easily live and to devote himself to those in need.

In his first address as Pope to the crowd on St. Peter’s Plein, he said in Italian: “Together we have to look for how we can be a mission church, a church that builds bridges, dialogue, always open to receive with open arms like this square.”

As an American, he is uniquely positioned to stand in contrast to energetic conservative Catholicism in his home country, and has strongly pushed back against the militant vision of Christian power that the Trump government has raised.

On social media in February he immediately confronted Vice -President JD Vance, who had claimed on Fox News that Christian theology could justify to avert migrants and strangers in need because it actually stands for family for the first time. Cardinal Prevost posted on X that “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus does not ask us to rank our love for others.”

Despite his American roots, the Chicago born Polyglot, 69, is seen as a church man who transcends boundaries. The official news website of the Vatican did not frame him as the first pope from the United States, but the second pope from America. He had two decades in Peru, where he became bishop and a naturalized citizen and then rose to lead his international religious community, the Order of St. Augustine. Under Pope Francis, he held one of the most influential Vatican posts, who runs the office that bishops selects and manages worldwide.

That made him an attractive choice for the Roman Curia, the powerful bureaucracy that rules the church and who, after often experienced reprimand and unrest of Pope Francis, wanted someone who knew and appreciated the institution.

Last year he told the official news website of Vatican that “the bishop should not be a little prince in his kingdom, but is rather called authentic to be humble, close to the people he needs to be, to walk with them, to suffer with them, and to look for ways in which he can better live the gospel costs in the middle of his people.”

Often described as reserved and discreet, he will probably leave Francis as Pope. Proponents believe that he will most likely continue the consultative process of Francis to include lay people in some meetings with bishops.

In a conclave with ideological gap between those who wanted to continue the inclusive but sometimes provocative agenda of Pope Francis, and those who preferred to return to a more conservative path aimed at learning purity, Pope Leo XIV probably represented a balanced alternative.

“He is not a brighter,” said the Reverend Mark R. Francis, a former classmate of Cardinal Prevost, who runs the American arm of the clergymen of St. Viator, a religious order, in Chicago.

“He is a very balanced, measured type of person who, in a sense, deals well with crisis,” said Father Francis. “It doesn’t flatter him. He thinks about things and offers very stable leadership.”

He has spent a large part of his life outside the United States. In Rome in 1982 at the age of 27, he obtained a doctorate in Canon Law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also in Rome. In Peru he was a missionary, parish priest, teacher and bishop. As leader of the Augustinians, he visited orders all over the world and speaks Spanish and Italian.

Francis tried to expand the geographical diversity of the hierarchy of the church and called many new cardinals, some of countries that had never had one. Francis gave Cardinal his red hat in 2023, making him one of the more recent members of the College of Cardinals who have chosen him.

A diplomatic treaty required him to be naturalized as a citizen of Peru before he could become bishop in Chiclayo, a city in the northwestern part of the country. During his time as a bishop there he often visited distant communities.

He recorded in pastoral social work, said Yolanda Díaz, a teacher and member of the church in Chiclayo. “Instead of thinking about pastoral work as people who went to church,” she said, “he wanted the church to go to the people.”

Sister Dianne Bergant, who taught him in Bible classes in the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where he received a masters in divinity in 1982, said he was a calm ‘a student’. She said that when he was made, decades after he had been a student in her class, he immediately responded to a congratulation -e -mail she sent him and thanked her for helping him in his theological development.

In the past, Pope Leo XIV took a different tone on LGBTQ people than his predecessor, who said famous: “Who am I to judge? “Asked about gay spirituals.

In an address from 2012 to bishops, before the often placed words of Pope Francis, Cardinal Prevost complained that Western news media and the popular culture promote “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel.” He mentioned the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families consisting of partners of the same sex and their adopted children.”

As a bishop in Chiclayo, he opposed a government plan to add teachings about gender to schools. “The promotion of gender ideology is confusing because it strives to create sexes that do not exist,” he told local news media.

Cardinal Prevost, like many of the others who finally chose him, received criticism of his dealings with priests accused of sexual abuse.

In Chicago, proponents of victims of sexual abuse say that his office has not warned a nearby Catholic school that a priest who had determined church leaders for years was sheltered in a monastery in the neighborhood, from 2000. As head of the Midwestern Order to the Monaster would Cardinal would Cardinal.

Friends say that he is relaxed and modest, passing the Augustinian monastery in Rome to eat with priests in order and always wash his own dishes, said the Reverend Alejandro Moral Antón, the successor of Cardinal Prevost as Augustine leader in Rome.

The Reverend Michele Falcone, 46, a priest in the order of St. Augustine who was previously led by Cardinal Prevost, said that his mentor and friend had a cooperation style and could be flexible, depending on the context. He can wear very formal robes for an imperial mass while casually dressing casually for a local parish.

It is known that he plays a game of tennis and is a fan of baseball and explains the rules to some of his Italian friends and colleague -Augustinians. Yet Father Falcone said: “It’s not like Pope Francis. His passion does not reach those levels.”

In recent years, the Catholic Archdiocese in Chicago, led by Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, has been an important region of support for the agenda of Pope Francis for the Church.

Chicagoans immediately looked forward to the news that the first American pope was a resident of their city. Father William Lego, the pastor of the St. Turibius church in Chicago, knew the new Pope when they were young seminarists.

“I think my classmate just got it,” he said, stunned, from his office. “They chose a good man. He always had that feeling of being aware of the poor and tried to help them.”

When his name was first announced on the square, many in the crowd were completely stunned. “Not Italian?” Several said, and a man played the announcement again that he had captured on his phone to see if he could hear the name.

Behind him, Nicole Serena, 21, an Italian American marketing in Rome,: “I think an American pope has just been chosen.”

Benjamin Smith 20, from Crosby, Minn., Said he had never heard of Cardinal Prevost. “But this is so great,” said Mr. Smith, an exchange student who studied theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas, where the cardinal received his PhD. “I’m so excited,” said Mr. Smith.

In Peru, Father Pedro Vásquez, 82, was a priest in Chiclayo, where Cardinal Prevosted as a bishop, so excited that he said that “my heart will fail me!”

“I’m going to faint!” He said, “Oh my God, oh my God!”

Mitra Taj Contributed report from Lima, Peru, Julie Turkewitz from Bogotá, Colombia, Josephine de la Bruyère van Rome and Julie Bosman from Chicago.