How about the American pope?

Some moments in history are so singular that even many years after their occurrence we remember exactly where we were when we heard the news of their happening.

May 8, 2025, will remain one of these days for many of us. 

Years from now we will recall exactly where we were when we heard the name of the first American-born pope and saw him step out onto the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica. I was at a meeting of local vocation directors when the white smoke appeared over St. Peter’s. As we ate lunch and waited for the great reveal, we chatted about who we thought the new pope might be.

“Whoever it is, we know it won’t be an American,” we all agreed.

But just a few minutes later, the red drapes parted and three figures emerged onto the loggia. “Habemus papam!” the red-clad cardinal announced. And then we heard it: Dominum … Robertum … Franciscum … Cardinalem … Prevost!

Could this really be true? Yes! 

The cardinals had, in fact, just elected an American. I was happy to join the others in celebrating our new Pope but what I really wanted to do was go off to a quiet place to ponder just what this meant.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that the Spirit’s choice of Cardinal Prevost had a profound significance for the Catholics of our country, especially young people.

I believe what we U.S. Catholics should see in Pope Leo’s election as an invitation to take hold of our faith, to move beyond our zones of comfort, to reach toward the heights of holiness and strive after the same missionary zeal that has animated him.

Pope Leo is one of us but he is so much more than that!

In serving as an Augustinian missionary, Father Robert Prevost sacrificed creature comforts, proximity to family and personal security to serve in Peru during a particularly dangerous time in its history.

He rode horseback to reach his people in remote areas. In tough times he waded through flood waters to serve both their spiritual and material needs.

Those who knew him well remember him as a man who brought peace and tranquility wherever he went. According to biographer Matthew Bunson of EWTN, his fellow bishops in Peru called him the “Saint of the North.”

In his book, Portrait of the First American Pope, Leo XIV, Bunson provides helpful analysis of Pope Leo’s background and self-identity.

Bunson writes, “As we can tell from his own remarks, Leo XIV considers himself more closely attached to Peru than to the United States. It is in South America where he dedicated his most intense pastoral efforts and where he has lived for nearly half of his life as a priest of Jesus Christ. Whether we call Leo the ‘first American Pope’ doesn’t really matter, in the end. What matters is that his first identity is in Christ and his Church.”

After the conclave, Washington’s Cardinal Robert McElroy commented that “the impact of him being an American was almost negligible in the deliberations of the conclave and surprisingly so.”

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo added, “He’s really a citizen of the entire world since he spent so much of his life, ministry, missionary work and zeal for Christ in South America.”

As U.S. Catholics we shouldn’t feel slighted that Pope Leo did not mention his American roots nor speak English during his first appearance before the world or that he mentioned his flock in Chiclayo but not his loved ones in Chicago.

Inspired by Pope Leo, we should feel spurred on to think beyond our own horizons.
Matthew Bunson quotes Bishop Dan Turley, a fellow American-born Augustinian and bishop emeritus in Peru, who stated that the church is, by her very essence, missionary, and without this dimension she would cease to be the Church of Christ.

Bunson concludes, “Thinking in these terms, then, the loss of Christendom and the loss of faith in the rich West are, although tragic, also an opportunity and an invitation – to remember and to recover what the church is meant to be.”

May Pope Leo XIV inspire us all to recover what the church is meant to be, to embrace her missionary dimension and the person of Jesus Christ in whatever milieu we live!

Sister Constance Veit is the communications director for the Little Sisters of the Poor in the United States and an occupational therapist.