Presidents, prime ministers and royalty were among those present in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday morning for Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural Mass, a service that marks the official start of his pontificate. Here are some of the world leaders who have flown to Rome to attend the Mass that installs Pope Leo as the leader […]
Just days into the papacy of Leo XIV, the new pope has begun to lay out his vision for how he will lead the Catholic church. Like his predecessor, he plans to embrace the poor and the marginalized. He wants to continue Francis’s effort to fling open the doors of the Vatican and listen to […]
American cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church described the historic papal conclave that concluded this week as relatively easy, with no arm-twisting or overt politicking. When their work was done — and as the outside world waited to learn the new pope’s identity — the cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel “went wild,” one recalled on […]
They remembered him in rubber boots, in a devastating flood, working side by side with the Red Cross. They shared images of him on a horse, in the countryside, wearing stylish aviator shades and crooning Christmas ballads — “Feliz Navidad!” — grinning and clapping alongside a rousing crowd. Pope Leo XIV may have been born […]
Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born cardinal selected on Thursday as the new pope, is descended from Creole people of color from New Orleans. The pope’s maternal grandparents, both of whom are described as Black or mulatto in various historical records, lived in the city’s Seventh Ward, an area that is traditionally Catholic and a melting […]
Robert Francis Prevost, who was elected the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church on Thursday and took the name Pope Leo XIV, is the first pope from the United States. The decision from the 133 voting cardinals, which arrived in a plume of white smoke at the end of their second day of voting […]
He never aspired to be a priest. After he rose to be a bishop, he implied that he suffered from impostor syndrome. And when Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle of the Philippines is asked if he could become the first Asian pope — a frequent question in recent years — he says it is impossible. […]
Before mourners in their thousands gather in St. Peter’s Square to grieve, before leaders from around the world arrive to pay their respects, and long before cardinals cloister themselves to consider the future, the Vatican holds a small ceremony when a pope dies. It did so again around 8 p.m. Monday when, just over 12 […]
I remember the people. Thousands of them, sometimes hundreds of thousands, pressed together in aging stadiums, lining the streets of one place or another. In the Mexican state of Chiapas, so many people crowded in a local stadium in 2016 that it seemed to heave from the human swarm, everyone craning upward, squinting at the […]
As Argentines bid farewell to Pope Francis, the grief of the faithful has been deepened by a lingering sorrow, a question that has hung in the Buenos Aires air: Why did their native son never return home? “I have to be honest, I didn’t like that he never came to Argentina,” Laura Aguirre, 50, a […]
