The Catholic Church has elected American Robert Prevost, 69, as its new leader. He is the first American and the first native-English speaker to be named Pope but also speaks Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese and can read Latin and German. He has taken the name Leo. Prevost headed the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops, which is the office tasked with bishop appointments around the world. "We are often worried about teaching doctrine, but we risk forgetting that our first duty is to communicate the beauty and joy of knowing Jesus," Prevost, in one of his few interviews, told Vatican News. The publication said Prevost brings to the table pastoral experience in the peripheries with expertise in navigating the complexities of the church's central governance. This article was written by Adam Button at www.forexlive.com.

Pope Leo XIV, the American Robert Prevost, said “Peace be with you” in his first words as pope, offering a message of peace and dialogue “without fear.”

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Robert Francis Prevost, the first pope from the United States (US), has a history of missionary work in Peru but also a keen grasp of the inner workings of the Catholic Church. Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, a Chicago native, was entrusted by his predecessor Francis to head the powerful Dicastery for Bishops, charged with advising the pontiff on new bishop appointments. The sign of confidence from Francis speaks to Prevost’s commitment as a missionary in Peru to the “peripheries” – overlooked areas far from Rome prioritised by Francis – and his reputation as a bridge-builder and moderate within the Curia. The 69-year-old Archbishop-Bishop emeritus of Chiclayo, Peru, was made a cardinal by Francis in 2023 after being named prefect of the dicastery, one of the Vatican’s most important departments – and a post that introduced him to all key players in the church. Vatican watchers had given Prevost the highest chances among the group of US cardinals of being pope, given his pastoral bent, global view and ability to navigate the central bureaucracy. Italian newspaper La Repubblica called him “the least American of the Americans” for his soft-spoken touch. His strong grounding in canon law has also been seen as reassuring to more conservative cardinals seeking a greater focus on theology. Following Francis’s death, Prevost said there was “still so much to do” in the work of the church. “We can’t stop, we can’t turn back. We have to see how the Holy Spirit wants the church to be today and tomorrow, because today’s world, in which the church lives, is not the same as the world of 10 or 20 years ago,” he told Vatican News last month. “The message is always the same: proclaim Jesus Christ, proclaim the Gospel, but the way to reach today’s people, young people, the poor, politicians, is different,” he said. Born on 14 September 1955, in Chicago, Prevost attended a minor seminary of the Order of St Augustine in St Louis as a novice before graduating from Philadelphia’s Villanova University, an Augustinian institution, with a degree in mathematics. After receiving a masters degree in divinity from Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union in 1982, and a doctorate degree in canon law in Rome, the polyglot joined the Augustinians in Peru in 1985 for the first of his decade-long missions in that country. Returning to Chicago in 1999, he was made provincial prior of the Augustinians in the US Midwest and later the prior general of the order throughout the world. But he returned to Peru in 2014 when Francis appointed him as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo in the country’s north. Nearly a decade later, Prevost’s appointment in 2023 as head of the dicastery came after Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet was accused of sexually assaulting a woman and resigned for age reasons. The Vatican later dropped the case against Ouellet for insufficient evidence. Prevost also serves as president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. The post Soft-spoken Prevost is first pope from the United States appeared first on The Namibian.