The American pope: What does the election of Pope Leo XIV mean?

The Roman Catholic Church has a new pope, and it didn’t take the papal conclave long to make it happen. On the fourth ballot, taken in the grandeur of the Sistine Chapel, the cardinal electors chose a new pope, who was announced as Pope Leo XIV. Habemas papam, declared the conclave, ushering in the reign of the new pope—an unprecedented American pope.So what’s his story? Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago in 1955 and had a very typical American Catholic boyhood, serving as an altar boy a