Here’s What the New Pope Really Thinks (Beside Hating Trump)

When white smoke began pouring from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney Thursday, after as few as four ballots, many assumed that meant the sitting Catholic cardinals had selected the consensus front-runner Pietro Parolin, who had served as Pope Francis’s secretary of state since 2013, as the new pope. If there’s one thing you have to hand to the assembled leaders of the Catholic Church, it’s this: They do know how to surprise you.

When the curtains of a balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica were drawn an hour later, Parolin did emerge—to announce that Robert Francis Prevost had been elected pope. Few had thought that the Chicago-born Prevost—now known as Pope Leo XIV—was a contender. But there he was: the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church.

Prevost, like Parolin, was a close ally of Francis. Ordained in 1982, he has spent much of his time in Peru and was appointed by Francis as bishop of Chiclayo in 2014. In 2023, he was appointed to the influential position of prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. As with Parolin, Prevost is seen as a continuity pick, given his close ties to his predecessor.

In his opening speech, the newly anointed Pope Leo XIV paid tribute to Francis, who had last been seen speaking on the same balcony shortly before Easter. “Let us keep in our ears the weak voice of Pope Francis that blesses Rome,” Leo XIV said…