SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
And I'm Scott Detrow in Rome on the edge of St. Peter's Square, where this evening...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Latin).
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DETROW: ...For the first time in the history of the Catholic Church, cardinals elected an American as pope.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Latin).
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DETROW: Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, a 69-year-old Chicago native who has chosen the name Pope Leo XIV.
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POPE LEO XIV: (Speaking Italian).
DETROW: More than an hour after white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel, Pope Leo appeared. He spoke at length to the crowd in Italian and then Spanish, delivering what he called a message of peace, urging people around the world to let peace enter their, quote, "hearts, reach your families and all people." Prevost was a close adviser to Pope Francis and praised the late pope in his remarks. It is a remarkable moment for this 2,000-year-old institution, and we are going to talk about it with NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose and NPR's longtime Rome correspondent Sylvia Poggioli. Sylvia, I will start with you - an American pope.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: It is totally amazing. I was totally flabbergasted. The possibility of an American pope had always been considered a taboo, given the immense power of the United States, the superpower on the world stage, the geopolitical leader. And now here we are with the first American as head of the worldwide Catholic Church. It's also true that Robert Francis Prevost spent only about a third of his life in the United States. He spent some two decades in Peru and has been based here at the Vatican for several years now as head of the department that chooses and appoints bishops.
He's had extensive international experience, and Prevost is a polyglot. In his first words to the faithful, to the city and to the world, he spoke mostly in Italian and then in Spanish, with special greetings to the people of Peru, where he spent so much of his lifetime. Today, in his first words as pope, he did not speak in English. I wonder if that was on purpose, a way of presenting himself as a citizen of the world without a specific national label.
DETROW: Jason, what do we know about Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo?
JASON DEROSE, BYLINE: Well, Robert Prevost is 69 years old. He was born and raised in Chicago. He has an undergraduate degree from Villanova University in Pennsylvania, and he majored in mathematics there, not in religion. He entered the Augustinian religious order, rising to the head of that order, eventually. He has degrees in theology from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and then he came to Rome to study at the Pontifical St. Thomas Aquinas University (ph), where he received his doctorate in theology. He spent time working in Peru as a missionary, also as a pastor, as a bishop, as an archbishop. He's also taught. He's taught canon law. He's taught patristics. He's taught moral law at the Catholic seminary there.
And he speaks, as Sylvia said, English, Spanish and Italian and teaches in all of those languages. He's also served at the Vatican in administration, working with clergy and bishops. Very familiar with local bishops around the world. Part of his work was to vet nominations to become bishop, so will know a lot of people in those local administrative areas around the world. Also served on the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, where he served as a missionary. And he has deep pastoral experience, missionary experience, teaching experience, administrative experience - really sort of the whole package, and was a top adviser to Pope Francis.
DETROW: And this was a big question going into this conclave - would the church stay on the path that Pope Francis set for the past 12 years or turn back, revert, go in a different, more traditional direction? This seems to be a big clue about what the cardinals were thinking.
DEROSE: Well, I think there was a fork in the road here. Conservatives were unhappy with the speed at which Francis moved on issues regarding, say, migrants or women or entering politics, LGBTQ issues. They said it caused confusion and disunity. One of the biggest questions had been this - did Francis go too far too quickly? Well, given Prevost's closeness to Francis, I think that the cardinals decided to go with someone in Francis' mold, though someone who might move at a slightly slower pace than Francis did, but still moving in that same direction. Liberals were worried that there would be a backlash against Francis and cardinals would choose to go in a more conservative direction. But, Scott, that doesn't seem to have been the case.
DETROW: Sylvia, a lot of attention on the name Leo, Pope Leo XIV. Tell us about the name Pope Leo in the Roman Catholic Church's history, how important this is.
POGGIOLI: Well, the last Leo was Leo XIII, and he was known for his 1891 encyclical "Rerum Novarum" - "Of New Things." In it, he outlined the rights of workers to fair wages, safe working conditions and the creation of trade unions. The document also affirmed the right to own property, free enterprise, and it was opposed to both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. Leo XIII was called the social pope or the workers' pope, and he is really seen as the founder of the Catholic Church's social doctrine.
DETROW: So that's Leo XIII. Jason, what can we say at this moment about how Leo XIV might be as pope?
DEROSE: Well, I don't think we should predict, but we can know something about the way he worked as a pastor and bishop and archbishop, which might help us understand how he might be as a pope. I think he resembles Francis in his commitment to the poor and to migrants, though he has been criticized for not doing enough to address clergy sexual abuse at the local level. And I think that's true, Scott, of many in church leadership around the world. He told the Vatican News agency that a bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom, but rather a church leader who's called to authentically be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to talk with them, to walk with them - Francis might have even said to smell like them. I think that's very much in the Francis mold.
Also, as a cardinal, he was - he had such broad international experience and experience here in Rome. I think he understands that while he might be from America, America is not the center of the world. He spent so much time in South America, specifically Peru. That would help him to really understand and bring the concerns of that region to the international stage.
And a couple of areas that I think progressives might not be too pleased by are this. He's made some comments regarding LGBTQ issues. He's lamented what he's called the media's and the culture's sympathy with, quote, "homosexual lifestyles." He's also criticized the government of Peru when it wanted to teach gender in schools, and he called the promotion of, quote, "gender ideology" confusing because it creates the idea that genders don't exist.
DETROW: Jason, we talked about the question of sticking with Francis' path or going back in another direction. The other crossroad the church seemed to face, based on the interviews we all did was, did the cardinals want to elect an evangelist or a bureaucrat? Somebody to spread the faith or somebody to keep the trains running on time? What does this tell us?
DEROSE: Well, I think he worked as a missionary. He worked as a pastor. He worked as a local bishop. He has significant experience in many areas, you know, at that local level of missionary work and parish work. He accompanied people in their daily religious lives, in baptisms, in funerals, in marriages. He's used to preaching and teaching and caring for his flock. But as a bishop, he's an administrator who worked at the regional level; as an archbishop, a larger administrator. He ran a religious order. That's more administrative experience.
Also, though, part of the Vatican Curia here, he worked to vet and appoint bishops. He has that very high-level administrative experience, and I think that he understands that working with these complex organizations, like the Curia, in complex ways takes work. So really, from the top to the bottom, a lot of experience.
DETROW: Sylvia, an American has been elected pope, and this has happened at a moment where America's role in the world is in a really delicate, high-profile place. The entire rest of the world is constantly reacting and responding to the Trump administration. It seems significant that the College of Cardinals would pick not just any American pope, but somebody who seems to see the world very differently than the sitting American president.
POGGIOLI: Very, very differently. The new pope follows very much the Francis legacy of - with primary concern for migrants, refugees and victims of war. That's a concern that the current American administration does not appear to share. In fact, one of the first comments I heard here in the crowd was that Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV and the first American pope, was chosen by his fellow cardinals as the Catholic Church's response to the U.S. president, Donald Trump, and his administration's tough stance on immigration and many other issues. I think it'll be very interesting to see where the new pope will travel first. Will he visit what his predecessor, Pope Francis, liked to call the peripheries? I wonder what will be his first destination on the geopolitical stage.
DETROW: Jason DeRose, I'm going to ask both you and Sylvia this, but we're talking about all these things we think might be the case. We need to wait and see what happens when the pope starts to act, starts to act publicly. What are your biggest questions going forward in these next few weeks about what Pope Leo is going to do, how he's going to focus?
DEROSE: I wonder if he will continue the focus of the Francis papacy on migrants, on the poor, on the people who have the least control over their lives. I think that that is something Francis brought to the attention of the world when his first papal voyage was to an island sheltering refugees. I will be very interested in seeing where he goes first and what some of his first words will be when he goes to those places. Does he visit a war zone? Does he visit refugees? Does he speak of and to and about women? All of those things will be - I will be looking for.
DETROW: Sylvia, any big questions that you have about how the Vatican change - could change under an American's leadership?
POGGIOLI: Well, it'll be very interesting to see. We've talked many times about Francis having done so many new things, revolutionary reforms, but there's some things he stopped short of, and - in terms of the women deacons and the possibility of elder married men becoming clergy. We'll see. Will the new pope go further? Will he stop there? That's going to be one of the most interesting things in the future.
DETROW: NPR's Sylvia Poggioli and Jason DeRose, thanks to both of you.
DEROSE: You're welcome.
POGGIOLI: You're welcome.
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