Americans Celebrate Pope Leo XIV, the First Pontiff From the U.S.

U.S.|Americans Burst With Pride, and Surprise, at the First Pope From the U.S.

The announcement from St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City set off waves of shock and pride across the United States: For the first time ever, the pope was an American. And a White Sox fan to boot.

In more than two dozen interviews across the country, Catholics and non-Catholics alike said they were stunned by the news that a 2,000-year-old religious institution had chosen Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, originally from the South Side of Chicago, as its new leader, Pope Leo XIV.

“We got what we never expected,” said the Rev. Lawrence C. Tajah, a chaplain for the Nigerian Catholic community in Hyattsville, Md. “The public speculations never really focused on America but rather Asia, Africa and probably Rome or Italy. But this is a very big surprise for us, and a very good one too, perhaps because it came from a place we never anticipated.”

Some hoped that a pontiff known to friends simply as “Bob” would add a plain-spoken American sensibility to the Vatican’s ornate traditions. Others offered prayers that an American pope might help to heal the divisions within American Catholicism, and perhaps even smooth the rifts between the United States and its allies that have widened under President Trump.

“It’s part of a new American narrative,” said Alex Freeman, a 33-year-old event planner from Atlanta. Ms. Freeman was raised Baptist but attends Catholic services occasionally at a historically Black Catholic church.

The announcement stirred a rare moment of bipartisan comity for a politically divided country. President Trump hailed Pope Leo’s election as a “Great Honor for our Country,” while former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a lifelong Catholic, said, “May God bless Pope Leo XIV of Illinois.”