Pope to Cardinals on why he chose the name Leo XIV: “There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.”
— Rich Raho (@richraho.bsky.social) May 10, 2025 at 7:44 AM
How Pope Leo XIV became the conclave’s stealth candidate – The Washington Post www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0…
— Timothy McBride (@mcbridetd.bsky.social) May 10, 2025 at 12:44 AM
Basically, he’s a networker. Per the Washington Post, “How Pope Leo XIV became the conclave’s stealth candidate” [gift link]
… Cardinal Robert Walter McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, said Prevost’s breakthrough occurred Thursday, the day of his selection: “There was a great movement on the second day, a great movement.”
Yet as early as the initial vote Wednesday, Prevost was already over-performing, according to one senior Vatican official — in part because the prelate had always been a stronger candidate than many outside the Vatican generally understood. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a secret vote.
An American who had become a naturalized citizen of Peru while serving the church on the country’s northwest coast, Leo emerged as an early favorite among an influential group that included a cluster of Latin American cardinals, particularly those who sought a continuation of Francis’s legacy.
“Prevost, unknown to the many, was favored by a majority of the cardinals that came from abroad — he wasn’t unknown to them,” the official said.
Even before the conclave began, Prevost was viewed by many in the Vatican as a logical successor to Francis despite being from the United States — a nation the Holy See had long seen as having outsize global power and influence. Francis had plucked him from his distant outpost in Peru in 2023 to run the influential dicastery, or ministry, of bishops. In no time, he’d become indispensable to the pope’s bid to change the church by elevating clerics seen as more in line with Francis’s pastoral approach, emphasis on the poor and open door.
In the important congregations — assemblies of cardinals ahead of the vote — Prevost had not necessarily overwhelmed the cardinals with inspiring words, the way Francis had in 2013 when he spoke stirringly of ministry to the world’s “peripheries.” Rather, he had a gentle, engaging manner and, as Francis liked to say, “the smell of the sheep” on him from serving the church for decades in the proverbial trenches.
Sunday Morning Open Thread: The New PopePost + Comments (133)
