This Thursday, May 8, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost turned out to be in the world as a new pontiff sovereign chosen by his peers. From his fatherly paternal origins to his love for tennis, return to the profile of the head of the Catholic Church.
The Vatican announced, this Thursday, May 8, 2025, the election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost at the pontificate, under the name of Léon XIV. Originally from Chicago, he became the 267th pope of the Catholic Church and the first American to access this function.
Robert Francis Prevost is a doctor in canon law, the one who governs the church. The new Saint-Fère devoted a large part of his life to the mission in Peru, where he was bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023. In 2023, he was appointed prefect of the Dicastery for the bishops by Pope Francis, a role in which he supervised the appointment of bishops around the world.
A name and origins
During his first public appearance as Pope, Leon XIV affirmed his intention to continue the commitment of his predecessor for an open church and close to the faithful, assuring them that “evil will not win”. Close to François even in his last moments, he also shares his positions on migrants, the climate and his moderate reserves vis-à-vis the LGBT+community, underlines the independent.
In addition to his first announcements, we will remember that the new Pope, the very first from the United States, chose his name in tribute to Léon XIII, an Italian Saint-Père whose pontificate, one of the longest in history, extended from 1878 to 1903, and especially at the origin of a letter to Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, in the United States, dated January 22, 1899. This document, Leon XIII castigated what he called “Americanism”, who was also concerned about the place of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Known as “the least American of the Americans” within the Curia, he was born from a mother of Italian origin and a father of French origin. On the other hand, notes Le Figaro On a lighter note, he considers himself “as a tennis lover player”, a more popular sport across the Atlantic than in Italy, where football, dear to François, reigns supreme.
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