VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV, history’s first American pontiff, celebrated his first Mass as head of the Catholic church on Friday, presiding in the Sistine Chapel with the cardinals who elected him to succeed Pope Francis and follow in his social justice-minded footsteps.

Wearing white vestments, Leo processed into the Sistine Chapel and blessed the cardinals as he approached the altar and Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment” behind it. He delivered the opening prayers and hymns in Latin, and women read the initial Scripture readings.

Addressing the cardinals in English, he said “you have called me to carry the cross and to be blessed” and asked for their help to spread the Catholic faith. It was the first time Leo made public remarks in English, after he spoke in Italian and Spanish only in his first comments from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday.

Leo XIV, the Chicago-born Augustinian missionary Robert Cardinal Prevost, was elected Thursday afternoon as the 267th pope, becoming the first pope from the United States.

In his first appearance to the world Thursday evening, the 69-year-old wore the traditional red cape of the papacy — which Francis had eschewed on his election in 2013 — suggesting a return to some degree of rule-following after Francis’s unorthodox pontificate.

Yet in naming himself Leo XIV, after the 19th century social justice reformer pope and referring to some of Francis’s priorities, the new pope could also have wanted to signal a strong line of continuity: Another Leo in church history was Brother Leo, the 13th-century friar who was a great companion to St. Francis of Assisi, the late pope’s namesake.

“Together, we must try to find out how to be a missionary church, a church that builds bridges, establishes dialogue, that’s always open to receive — like on this piazza with open arms — to be able to receive everybody that needs our charity, our presence, dialogue and love,” Leo said in near-perfect Italian in his first comments to the world.

Francis Had His Eye on the New Pope

Francis, the first Latin American pope, clearly had his eye on Cardinal Prevost and in many ways saw him as his heir apparent. He sent the prelate, who had spent years as a missionary in Peru, to take over a complicated diocese there in 2014. 

Francis then brought Cardinal Prevost to the Vatican in 2023 to head the powerful Dicastery for Bishops, which vets bishop nominations around the world and is one of the most important jobs in church governance.

Earlier this year, Francis elevated Cardinal Prevost into the senior ranks of cardinals, giving him prominence going into the conclave that few other cardinals had.

There had long been a taboo on the idea of an American pope, given America’s superpower status in the secular world. Yet Cardinal Prevost prevailed, perhaps because he’s also a Peruvian citizen and had lived for two decades in Peru, first as a missionary and then as bishop.

Since arriving in Rome, Cardinal Prevost had kept a low public profile but was well-known to the men who count, and respected by those who worked with him. Significantly, he presided over one of the most revolutionary reforms Francis made, when he added three women to the voting bloc that decides which bishop nominations to forward to the pope.

In a 2023 interview with Vatican News, Cardinal Prevost said the women had enriched the process and reaffirmed the need for the laity to have a greater role in the church.

“Even the bishops of Peru called him the saint, the Saint of the North, and he had time for everyone,” the Reverend Alexander Lam, an Augustinian friar from Peru who knows the new pope, said.

An Augustinian Pope

The last pope to take the name Leo was Leo XIII, an Italian who led the church between 1878 and 1903. That Leo softened the church’s confrontational stance toward modernity, especially science and politics, and laid the foundation for modern Catholic social thought. His most famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum of 1891, addressed workers’ rights and capitalism at the beginning of the industrial revolution and was highlighted by the Vatican in explaining the new pope’s choice of name.

That Leo also had close ties to the Augustinian order: He rebuilt an ancient Augustinian church and convent near his hometown of Carpineto, outside Rome, which is still in use by the new pope’s order today.

Vatican watchers said Cardinal Prevost’s decision to name himself Leo was particularly significant given the previous Leo’s legacy of social justice and reform, suggesting continuity with some of Francis’ chief concerns. Specifically, Leo cited one of Francis’s key priorities of making the Catholic church more attentive to lay people and inclusive, a process known as synodality.

“He is continuing a lot of Francis’s ministry,’’ the chairwoman of religious studies at Manhattan University in the Bronx, Natalia Imperatori-Lee, said. Yet she also said his election could send a message to the American church, which has been badly divided between conservatives and progressives, with much of the right-wing opposition to Francis coming from there.

“I think it is going to be exciting to see a different kind of American Catholicism in Rome,’’ Imperatori-Lee said.

Leo said in a 2023 interview with Vatican News that the polarization in the church was a wound that needed to be healed.

“Divisions and polemics in the church do not help anything. We bishops especially must accelerate this movement towards unity, towards communion in the church,” he said.

Looking Ahead

In his first hours as pope, Leo went back to his old apartment in the Sant’Uffizio Palace to see colleagues, according to selfies posted to social media. Vatican Media also showed him in the moments after his election praying at a kneeler in the Pauline Chapel before emerging on the loggia.

On Sunday, he is to deliver his first noon blessing from the loggia of St. Peter’s and attend an audience with the press on Monday in the Vatican auditorium, a Vatican spokesman, Matteo Bruni, said.

Beyond that, he has a possible first foreign trip at the end of May: Francis had been invited to travel to Turkey to commemorate the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, a landmark event in Christian history and an important moment in Catholic-Orthodox relations.

The new pope was formerly the prior general, or leader, of the Order of St. Augustine, which was formed in the 13th century as a community of “mendicant” friars — dedicated to poverty, service, and evangelization. Vatican News said Leo is the first Augustinian pope.

In Peru, he is known as the saintly missionary who waded through mud after torrential rains flooded the region, bringing help to needy people, and as the bishop who spearheaded the lifesaving purchase of oxygen production plants during the Covid pandemic.

“He has no problem fixing a broken-down truck until it runs,” Janinna Sesa, who met Cardinal Prevost while she worked for the church’s Caritas charity, said.

Associated Press