New Pope: Robert Francis Prevost has been elected Pope Leo XIV: Even before he was named from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, those gathered in the piazza were shouting ‘Viva il Papa’ – Long live the Pope.
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Who is the New Pope 2025 Robert Prevost?
Robert Francis Prevost, 69 years old, will be the 267th St Peter throne occupant who will be called Leo XIV. He is the first American to take on the office of pope, but he is treated almost from Latin America because of the countless years he served as a missionary in Peru.
Prevost, who was born in 1955 to parents of Spanish and Franco-Italian fathers in Chicago, attended church services as an altar boy and became ordained in 1982.
Even though he went to Peru three years later, he came back reguarly to the US to be a pastor and a prior in the city where he grew up.
He is of Peruvian nationality and is lovingly remembered as a man who worked with marginalised communities and worked on building bridges.
He had served 10 years as loco parish pastor and as a teaching at seminary at Trujillo, north-western Peru. In his first words as Pope, Leo XIV spoke fondly of Francis his predecessor.
“We still hear in our ears the weak but always courageous voice of Pope Francis who blessed us”, he said.
“United and hand in hand with God, let us advance together,” he told cheering crowds.
The Pope also expressed himself about his role on the Augustinian Order. In 2014, Francis made him Bishop of Chiclayo in Peru.
He is very well known to cardinals because of his prominent position as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Latin America, which has the task of appointing and overseeing bishops.
He was appointed archbishop in January 2023 and in a matter of months Francis appointed him a cardinal.
What are Pope Leo’s views?
The earliest attentions will be paid to the pronouncements of Leo XIV to know if he will continue his predecessor’s reforms in the Roman Catholic Church.
Prevost is thought to have held the same views as Francis regarding migrants, poor and environment.
Former roommate of his, Reverend John Lydon told BBC about how he described Prevost as “outgoing”, “down to earth”, and “very concerned with the poor”.
On his own background, in the lead up to his election, Prevost informed Italian network Rai that he had grown up in a family of immigrants.
I was born in the United States… But my grandparents were ambassador’s children; they being from all over the world; from France, Spain… I grew up in a very Catholic family, both my parents were very involved in the parish” he said.
Although Prevost was born in the US, the Vatican made reference to him as the second pope from the Americas (Francis was from Argentina). During his days in Peru he could not escape from the sexual abuse scandals that have hovered over the Church, even with his diocese vehemently praying he has not been part of any attempted cover-up.
When choosing the name Leo, Prevost has announced a pledge to dynamic social issues, as experts insist . The first pontiff to assume the name Leo, whose pontificate ended in 461, had a meeting with Attila the Hun, and convinced him not to attack Rome. Pope Leo the last who ruled the Church in 1878 to 1903 wrote an influential treatise on workers’ rights.
Former Archbishop of Boston Seán Patrick O’Malley wrote on his blog that the new pontiff “has chosen a name widely associated with the social justice legacy of Pope Leo XIII, who was pontiff at a time of epic upheaval in the world, the time of the industrial revolution, the beginning of Marxism, and widespread immigration”.
Pope’s new LGBT views are ambiguous, however, some groups, including the conservative College of Cardinals, think he may be less supportive than Francis.
Leo XIV has been seen to be supportive of the sort of declaration that Francis has had where he allows it for blessings for same-sex couples and others who find themselves in “irregular situations” although he has since added that bishops are expected to interpret such directives as per local contexts and cultures.
Last year discussing climate change, Cardinal Prevost had said it was time to switch “from words to action”. He demanded that humanity develop a “reciprocal” relationship with the environment.
And he talked about measures that are concrete at the Vatican, such as the installation of solar panels and the use of electric cars.
What is behind the new Pope’s chosen name, Leo?
Pope Leo XIV has endorsed Pope Francis’ move to admit women into the Dicastery for Bishops for the first time.
In 2023, he told Vatican News, “On several occasions we have seen that their point of view is an enrichment.”
In 2024, he said in an interview with the Catholic News Service that the presence of women “contributes substantially to the process of discernment in identifying who we can expect would be the best candidates to serve the Church in episcopal ministry”.
For What Reason Do Popes Take Different Names?
One of the first things a new pope does is select a new name to replace the baptismal name. The decision is part of a tradition that goes far back but it has been only recently that it has been organized this way.
Pope for over 500 years used his own name. This then evolved to take on symbolic names to make easier their given names or to refer to former pontiffs.
Throughout the years popes have often taken the names of predecessors, be it immediate or more remote, in tribute or admiration and as a sign of the desire to follow them and carry on with the latest pontificates.
Why has the new Pope selected Leo XIV as a name?
The new Pope has not indicated yet why he has chosen to be known as Pope Leo XIV. The reason can be many, but the name Leo has been used by numerous popes during the years.
Pope Leo I or St Leo the Great became pontiff between the years 440 – Year 461 AD. He was the 45th pope ever and is famous for his efforts for peace.
According to legend a miraculous apparition of Saints Peter and Paul which occurred during the meeting between Attila who was the king of the Huns and Pope Leo I in 452 AD, did make the latter desist from invading Italy. Then a fresco of the scene was done by Raphael.
Who was Leo XIII?
The last pope who went by name Leo was Pope Leo XIII, an Italian with baptismal name Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci.
He was elected in 1878 as the 256th occupant of the throne of St Peter, serving the Catholic Church during his life but not beyond 1903.
He is remembered as a pope who was devoted to the social policies and social justice.
He is especially famous for publishing an encyclical – a letter addressed to the bishops of the Church – “Rerum Novarum” a Latin term which translates “Of New Things”.
The encyclical covered a range of such topics as that of workers’ rights and social justice.
What are papal names are most popular?
Leo belongs to the list of some of the most popular papal names.
John has been the most used name, first being adopted by Pope and martyr Saint John I, in 523.
The last pope who chose this name was Italian Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli – Pope John XXIII elected in 1958, canonised by Pope Francis in 2014.
Why does this matter to the worlds of art and heritage?
Through his office Leo XIV becomes trustee of the great art and architectural treasures of Vatican City, and will be looked to as a moral authority, a global diplomat and a voice of social justice according to the Catholic church’s teachings and world peace goals.
He has been hailed as a moderate and bridge builder during the latest conclave that made him pop up, and as a successor who will keep Francis’ stand on migrants, the poor and on social justice. He was visibly stirred as he said his first words as pope to the world from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica: “Peace be with you.”
We will examine Leo’s practices as pope in relation to what had or had not been practiced by the popes before him, in either political, social, doctrinal, or liturgical issues. This will be done specifically with reference to the effect of his three immediate predecessors: two relatively conservative pontiffs – John Paul II (pope 1978-2005) and Benedict XVI (2005-13) – and the more progressive Francis (2013-25), the first pope of the Americas AND the first of the Global South.
Last year, when still president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, the then Cardinal Prevost was seen to clearly follow Francis’s groundbreaking lead on what the church has a responsibility to do on addressing climate change.
Speaking with reference to the 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ (praise be to you)—in which Francis had brought climate change into Catholic doctrine—Prevost said that it was time to move “from words to action” and to act on the basis of the Catholic church’s social doctrine. According to Vatican News said that, “Dominator over nature”, the task which God gave the man kind, should not become “tyrannical”. It must be a ‘relationship of reciprocity’ with the environment’.
Art history
The new pope now heads one of the historic revealed religions, and with final authority not just for the Vatican Museums and Library, whose collections take two millennia of Christianity, but the rest of the built patrimony of the tiny Vatican City state at the core of Rome.
Along with St Peter’s, an awe-inspiring Renaissance monument and a building of special religious and architectural significance, the built patrimony contains the Sistine Chapel and its ensemble of magnificent late 15th and early 16th century frescoes; the jewel-like Niccoline Chapel, frescoed by Fra Angelico; and the Raphael apartments, or stanze, of the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, where his The School of Athens earned their posthumous fame.
The Vatican is also owner of three papal basilicas in Rome outside the Vatican City but managed by the Holy See – Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni in Laterano and San Paolo Fuori le Mura.
One of the stanze in the Apostolic Palace has Raphael’s The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila, 1514, representing the moment in 452 when the first Pope Leo met the dreaded ruler of the Huns, Attila, on the shores of Lake Garda, and persuaded him successfully not to invade Italy or further attack Rome. Pope Leo I in papal crown mounted upon a splendid horse in full stream raises his right hand whilst a miraculous apparition of Saint Peter and Saint Paul with their swords lift above him as the raging king, Attila looks up at the flying saints supine with awe.
Two other Leos—the Popes Leo X and XI—were giants’ children from the noble Medici band of art patron patrons. One of the most intimate and unexpected of papal portraits was Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pope Leo X, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, a subject for Raphael’s Portrait of Pope Leo X and cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi de’ Rossi (1518-20) in the collection of Musei degli Uffizi.
Cultural restitution
Under Francis, the papacy renewed a series of symbolic gestures concerning the restitution of artistic and cultural values. In November 2022 Francis instructed the Vatican Museums to send back three Parthenon marble fragments to Greece, which were stored in its collections since the 19th century.
The three sculptural pieces used to belong to the Gregoriano Profano Museum, which housed antiquities from the holdings of the Holy See. They include pieces of the horse’s head pulling Athena’s chariot on the west-side frieze, and parts of a boy’s and bearded man’s heads.
This was an act larded with diplomatic symbolism since it followed the visit Francis made to Athens in 2021. There, he had called on Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens and the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, and made a nighttime visit to the Parthenon.
“History puts its weight on us, and here, today,” Francis said, “I have a renewed need to ask for forgiveness from God and our brothers and sisters for the errors of many Catholics who belong to his Church.”
Climate change and social justice
The fact that Francis set a powerful model for responding to the climate change question in Catholic doctrine by publishing Laudato Si, which dealt with the climate crisis, and the call for shared stewardship of the environment helped to establish his factotum role.
That encyclical, published as a precursor to the signing of the UN’s 2015 Paris climate accord, was the first occasion on which the Catholic church has incorporated climate change into its teachings. In his visit to Venice Biennale in 2024, Francis spoke to a crowd of 10000 in Piazza San Marco, that climate change was a threat to the city. “Venice is a part of the waters on which it stands and without care and protection of this unnatural environment it could even disappear.”
Francis connected the climate emergency with income equality and the pope’s mission to the poor, a link that Leo publicly agreed with last November at a meeting about climate change held in Rome by embassies of Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela in the Holy See.
The fact that Prevost should decide to bear the name of Leo has been noted by numerous commentators as paying a compliment to Leo XIII, pope between 1878 and 1903. Leo XIII is remembered, above all, by his encyclical of 1891, Rerum Novarum, in which he spoke of the rights of workers to a fair wage, humane working conditions. The spirit of Rerum Novarum is best captured in Pope Francis’s enyclical Laudato Si’ – Leo XIV supports this.
“The human environment and the natural environment degenerate in tandem. Unless we address causes associated with human and social degradation, we will never be able to effectively oppose environmental degradation,” Francis wrote in Laudato Si’.
“In fact, the deterioration of the environment and of society affects the most vulnerable people on the planet… For example, the depletion of fishing reserves especially hurts small fishing communities without the means to replace those resources; water pollution particularly affects the poor who cannot buy bottled water; and rises in the sea level mainly affect impoverished coastal populations who have nowhere else to go.”
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