Pope Leo XIV, first US pope, addresses crowd at St Peter's Square
Robert Prevost, the first US pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church, has addressed the crowd at St Peter's Square for the first time as Pope Leo XIV. From the loggia of St Peter's Basilica, the pope recalled he was an Augustinian priest, but that he was above all a Christian and a bishop, "So we can all walk together." Robert Prevost, a 69-year-old member of the Augustinian religious order, took the name Leo XIV. He appeared wearing the traditional red cape of the papacy, a cape that Pope Francis had eschewed on his election in 2013. There had long been a taboo against a US pope, given the geopolitical power already wielded by the United States in the secular sphere. But Prevost, a Chicago native, is also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
