Leo XIV: A Rough Sketch

When Robert Francis Prevost finally emerged onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, after a two-and-a-half week interregnum that featured an intensely anticipated two-day conclave, he caused a clamor. Habemus papam! Estne papa Americanus? In some corners there was glee, in others bewilderment. A good many thought they’d never see the day. Even the oddsmakers considered an American pope an extreme longshot. Yes, people placed bets on who the next pope would be — over $20 million worth, worldwide. “Gamblers will seek to place wagers of any type, whether it’s football or popes,” Bill Ordine, author of Fantasy Sports, Real Money: The Unlikely Rise of Daily Fantasy, told USA Today (May 3). But the next pope is “a lot harder to pick than, say, the number one pick in the NFL draft.” The number one pick of the College of Cardinals in 2025 proved really hard to pick.

Once the uproar subsided, puzzlement set in. Robert Prevost? Who the heck is he? Not much was known about the man who would be pope, other than that he grew up near Chicago, was ordained an Augustinian priest, was named prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops a couple years ago, and had spent the better part of two decades ensconced in the remote diocese of Chiclayo, Peru. So obscure was he that his appointment to the cardinalate in 2023 went unnoticed even among the Vatican press corps.

So unlikely was Prevost’s election that the oddsmakers had the likelihood at a minuscule two percent. “There has never been an American pope, and there probably won’t be anytime soon,” wrote a columnist for Las Vegas Optic (May 7). “But in the off chance I’m proven wrong, it will be on the shoulders of Prevost.”

By contrast, the two frontrunners were prelates with high profiles: the Italian Pietro Cardinal Parolin, Vatican secretary of state (25 percent), and the Filipino Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle (24 percent), dubbed by some the “Asian Francis.” You could say that the College of Cardinals threw an unexpected curveball early in the count in electing Prevost.