Robert Prevost, the first American pope in the history of 2000 years of the Catholic church, addressed the crowd to Saint-Pierre for the first time as Pope Leo XIV.
From the loggia of the Saint-Pierre basilica, the Pope recalled that he was an Augustinian priest, but that he was above all a Christian and a bishop, “so that we can all walk together.”
Robert Prevost, a 69 -year -old member of the Augustinian religious order, took the name of Leo XIV. He appeared bearing the traditional red cape of the papacy, a cape that Pope Francis had avoided during his elections in 2013.
There has long been a taboo against an American pope, given the geopolitical power already exercised by the United States in the secular sphere.
But Prevost, from Chicago, is also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then archbishop.
