Eric Reguly, Bureau Chief, Rome

At precisely 6:08 on Thursday evening, as the blazing Roman sun virtually blinded the tens of thousands of tourists and Christian pilgrims crammed into the streets around St. Peter’s Square, a puff of white smoke rose from the rooftop of the Sistine Chapel.
The plume came only 24 hours and a few minutes after the start of the secret conclave voting sessions. The remarkably speedy election suggested that the new pope had the edge from the get-go – a coronation in effect. But since the cardinals swore an oath of secrecy, the world may never know if the race was tighter than it appeared.

But who was the winner?

The world would not know until about an hour later. His name was announced over the Vatican loudspeakers, but it was garbled. Everyone heard, or thought they had heard, “Robert Francis,” triggering a flurry of questions: “Did I hear that right?” “Not an Italian pope?” “Robert who?”

Minutes later, the freshly minted Pope Leo XIV, dressed regally, stepped onto the loggia of the basilica. Before the smoke went up, he was known as Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. The crowd’s confusion turned into utter surprise by the man who replaced Pope Francis, who died at 88 on April 21. The Vatican had elected its first American pope in an era when much of the world has been seized by anti-Americanism in the divisive era of President Donald Trump.

But Leo, who is 69, making him fairly young by pope standards, would shed his “American” label quickly. His first words, spoken in Italian, were “Peace be with all of you.” He called for the church to “be a missionary church, building bridges, dialogue, always open to receiving with open arms for everyone … open to all, to all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love.”

He later broke into Spanish, one of five languages in which he is fluent, saying to his Latin American friends “I would particularly like to say hello to my compatriots from Peru,” a reference to his two-decades as a Augustinian missionary priest in that country (the Augustinians are a religious order known for missionary work, charity and education).

The Chicago-born prelate did not speak a single word of his native English.

Within minutes, social media was filled with reports that he was critical of U.S. Vice-President JD Vance over immigration policy (which he was), that he also had Peruvian citizenship, and that he took his papal name in honour of Pope Leo XIII, the late-19th-century pontiff who backed workers’ rights and trade unions.

Indeed, of the 17 American cardinals, of whom 10 were under age 80 and therefore eligible to vote, he seemed almost un-American, raising speculation that this apparent trait – not playing to the classic American cocksure stereotype − gave him the competitive edge in the conclave. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica said he came across as “the least American” of the U.S. cardinals.

The MAGA mob condemned his election, to no one’s surprise. Far-right influencer Laura Loomer, who is a pal of Mr. Trump, used X to say that Leo is “anti-Trump, anti-Maga, pro-open Border, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis. Catholics don’t have anything good to look forward to.” Another influencer, Charlie Kirk, said the new pontiff was an “Open borders globalist installed to counter Trump.”

The MAGA crowd was no fan of Francis and will be no fan of Leo, even if Leo seems more conservative and traditional on some issues, but certainly not all, than his predecessor.

As if to prove the point that his papacy will carry on many of the themes cherished by Francis – the environment, the wealth divide, compassion for the poor, the universal church, peace, dialogue with other religions, the promotion of women short of making them priests – Leo used his first Mass on Friday, in the Sistine Chapel, to give hints about his mission (no media were allowed to attend).

Alternating between Italian and English, he said he wanted the church to “illuminate the dark nights of this world” and that the church should be judged by the holiness of its members, not “the grandeur of its buildings.”

During his homily, he appeared to lament the material, instant-gratification world, where “technology, money, success, power or pleasure” are valued over Christian faith − a faith, he said, that was often “considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent.”

In Francis’s 12-year term as pope, he appointed 80 per cent of the cardinal electors, all but guaranteeing that a carbon copy of himself, or at least a cardinal that shared much of his theology and pastoral agenda, would make the cut as the next pope. That appears to have happened.

Father Thomas Reese, senior analyst at Religion News Service, said “this brisk conclave signals how strong the desire among the cardinal electors was to maintain continuity with the Francis papacy.”

Canada’s Gérard Lacroix, one of the electors, hinted, but only hinted, that the Francis factor played a role. “To elect a pope in 24 hours, that says something,” he told the Canadian media in Rome on Friday, a day after Leo was elected.

Still, there are signs that he will differ from Francis.

Starting with the obvious, he is of a younger generation than Francis, who was 19 years older than Leo when he died. He is American, was a math whiz and Chicago altar boy in his youth, and appears fit for his age. He likes tennis, horseback riding and is a fan of the Chicago White Sox baseball team, definitely not the Cubs (photos have surfaced of him at Sox games).

He is less garrulous than Francis was and not prone to making off-the-cuff remarks, or even written remarks, that are evidently designed to make headlines (Francis once wrote about “an economy [that] kills,” a startling quote to emphasize the ungodliness of me-first capitalism). Leo is known to be private and thoughtful and his media presence is scant, or at least was before he became pope. He rarely gave interviews.

He does not seem as progressive on sexual tolerance as was Francis. In 2013, early in his papacy, Francis famously said “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?”

A year earlier at the world synod of bishops, the man now atop the Vatican said “Western mass media is extraordinarily effective in fostering within the general public enormous sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel – for example abortion, homosexual lifestyle, euthanasia.” He went on to blame mass media for fostering “sympathy for anti-Christian lifestyle choices.”

Those remarks may please some conservative Catholics, but may not be enough to sway the hard-core traditionalists and certainly not Mr. Trump’s MAGA followers.

On other issues, they hold similar views. As Francis did, Leo, as Cardinal Prevost and Bishop Prevost before then, had strong views on the environment and immigrants. As cardinal, he said “Dominion over nature” should not become “tyrannical,” according to the official Vatican News site.

Both displayed empathy to migrants, though Francis was more vocal and cutting with his criticisms of governments that treated them poorly. In January, Francis called Mr. Trump’s plans for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants a “disgrace.”
On the sexual-abuse scandals, the records of Francis and Leo are mixed. Victims of sexual abuse say Francis did not go far enough in punishing abusers; the late pope’s supporters say he took the abuse file seriously.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAcountability.org, has called Leo’s record on fighting abuse “troubling” and called for him to make the elimination of coverups a priority. She said “most disturbing” was the allegation from victims in his old diocese in Peru that he never opened a formal canonical case against alleged sexual abuse carried out by two priests.

The diocese said it handled the accusations in line with church policy and that Cardinal Prevost had met with the women and urged them to complain to civil authorities.

Where Leo seems fully aligned with Francis is on the plight of the poor.

“It’s always hard to know exactly how a pope will embody his role, but I don’t think there’s any question that the church has chosen to follow in Francis’s footsteps here, in terms of the focus on the poor and peace,” said Melissa Wilde, chair of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

“The continued focus on the poor is probably the most important thing, and it’s incredibly reassuring from a global perspective.”

Cardinal Prevost made a powerful statement by picking Leo XIV as his papal name. “It’s not a casual reference,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said after Leo was introduced as pope.

Leo XIII, who was pope from 1878 until his death in 1903, was hugely influential in the church in setting social policy in the era of the industrial revolution that spawned a gaping divide between socialism, based on Karl Marx’s ideas on class conflict, and capitalist liberalism.

James Thwaites, professor emeritus of industrial relations at Laval University in Quebec City, has studied Leo XIII’s philosophy and said his encyclical Rerum Novarum − whose subtitle was “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor” − would come to define the church’s social action, including support for the formation of trade unions.

“Leo XIII would attempt to resolve this confrontation by identifying a middle road, refusing class conflict, the abolishing of private property and anticlerical orientations, on the one hand, and rejecting the greed, brutality and absence of social responsibility on the other,” he said in an e-mail interview.

Prof. Thwaites said “this choice of name may very well be his way of giving the church and society an indication of Leo XIV’s intentions for the future.”

Others agree. Father Reese said that Leo XIII “set the church on the path of defending the working classes and calling for a more just economy … Leo XIV will continue the legacy of Francis as a prophet speaking out for the poor and the marginalized.”
here are high hopes for Leo as a bridge-builder, more centrist than liberal or conservative, as much Latin American and American, and a pope who, by all accounts, will be guided by the pursuit of social equality and compassion for the poor in the name of God.

The speed of his election – one day – shows that cardinal electors were captivated by Leo, the man the world considered an extreme long shot to become pope.