Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected as the first U.S. born pope last week during the 2025 papal conclave.
Prevost will be known as Pope Leo XIV after succeeding Pope Francis, who passed away in April.
Father Kevin Earleywine, of the St. Patrick Catholic Church in Hampton, tells RadioOnTheGo News this was a historic conclave as popes have historically been citizens of Italy.
“The pope is the Bishop of Rome, which is in Italy, but back with Pope John Paul II was the first non-Italian Pope in history to be elected, at least in recent history. He was from Poland, and then they continued that trend with Pope Benedict, who was German, and then Pope Francis, who was from Argentina, though he had some Italian ethnicity. I think his parents were originally from Italy and immigrated to Argentina. And now we have Pope Leo XIV, yes, who, to everyone’s surprise, is an American citizen, which a lot of people did not expect that. A lot of people thought that was actually a strike against him because he was an American citizen, you know, that they thought that might be a reason why they wouldn’t choose him. And yet here he is.”
Pope Leo XIV was elected on the fourth ballot and Earleywine says though there are no criteria in picking a name once elected, a Pope usually picks one that has meaning to them and the church.
“So usually the name sort of embodies some sort of ideal that they may want to live out, express in their papacy. So it’s either a name of some saint whose ideal they wanted to embody. So it’s interesting now that Pope Leo XIV had chosen his name. I haven’t read yet where he’s explicitly stated why his reasons are, but it certainly harkens back to the previous Pope Leo, which would have been Pope Leo XIII at the end of the 1800s, famous for being a very spiritual man, popularized a prayer called the St. Michael the Archangel Prayer, but also for kind of leading the formation of what we now call Catholic social teaching. So it very much speaks to something of embodying something of a very spiritual ideal, but also of that previous Pope Leo.”
According to the Catholic News Agency, Leo is the fifth-most popular name chosen by popes.
Photo from the Associated Press.
