2 minutes ago, TribeTime said:

White smoke! 

Yep, white smoke!  Must have been an easy choice. 

American Pope!  Pope Leo XIV.  69 years old.  Born in Chicago. Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost.

On 4/26/2025 at 7:09 PM, Colonels_Wear_Blue said:

Most Church experts, including most of the current Cardinals from North America, have made comments in the last couple of decades about doubts regarding a Pope coming from the United States any time soon, based largely on the international economic and military role the US has and the possibility of any implications coming out of the Pope's ties to the US. (FYI, the BluegrassPreps Terms of Service apply here as much as anywhere else on the site, so be mindful of the No Politics Policy.) I tend to agree that there isn't going to be Pope from the US any time soon, and perhaps not even in my lifetime. There are currently 17 Cardinals in the US, and only 10 of them are papabile because 7 are age 80+ and are thereby ineligible as Cardinal Electors.

Cardinal Robert Prevost (United States, age 69, created Cardinal by Francis)
Cardinal Prevost has been a Cardinal since September 2023. He is Chicago born, and was ordained an Augustinian priest and was sent to serve in Peru, where he eventually became the chancellor of his local diocese. After that he left for Rome to earn his Canon Law degree in the Vatican and then returned to the US and soon became head of the Order of St. Augustine in North America. While he was in charge of the Augustinians, he had a fairly major scandal he stationed a priest that had been suspended from public ministry because of credible accusations of sexual abuse of minors in an Augustinian priory located around the street corner from a Catholic elementary school. In 2015 Pope Francis had Prevost installed as Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru where he served for 8 years before he was put in charge of the Dicastery for Bishops in 2023. With that position, he is in charge of the dicastery (department) in the Vatican that selects new Bishops around the world. He is considered to be a liberal-leaning moderate, having spoken out in strong support of synodality within the Church, and having expressed interest to increase the Church's outreach to the LGBTQ community and to approve the blessing of same-sex couples. He is also in favor of limiting traditional Latin mass, and has been conspicuously private about his opinions on ordaining women, allowing priests to marry.

Well you can consider me VERY surprised that they elected a Pope from the United States.

Here's what I posted previously in the thread about Pope Leo XIV. (I edited out all the information from my post about the other Cardinals who were considered papabile to make it easier to read, haha.)