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Robert Prevost Elected First American Pope, Takes Name Leo XIV. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 08, 2025 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

REV. JOHN LYDON, HOUSEMATE OF POPE LEO XIV FOR 10 YEARS: ... And he mentioned the synodal church, which actually that's what it means, a church of dialogue, of walking together, of diversity, but walking towards the common goal of peace and love, which is the message of the Gospels.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: How do you see him in relation to the role of Pope Francis? What kind of pope do you expect for him to be in relation to what Catholics have come to know from Pope Francis?

LYDON: Well, I certainly, of course, every Pope has his own personality, and that will come through in time. Knowing him as well as I do, I believe he's the continuation of Pope Francis. He'll have a different way of speaking about it and communicating about it, and maybe some emphases that will be different.

But I think the basic ideas of Pope Francis of being a church open to all, to dialogue with other traditions, other realities in the world, to being a church that gives witness to peace and to the poor. And he mentioned the missionary church. That was a clear thing of Pope Francis that we didn't hear a lot about from previous popes, the idea that the church needs to go outside of itself.

It needs to go, Pope Francis would say, to the peripheries, the peripheries of the world, and not just stay within our own church, our own churches, you know, our own buildings. The church isn't to be in the buildings, it's to go out to the world. And so I think that will be the hallmark, the continuation of that with obviously different perspectives, different ways of expressing it.

But he's an outstanding person, very intellectual, but he doesn't come off -- he's no way comes off as like a superior, looking down on people. In Peru, the people loved him because he was so close to them. They were constantly -- I remember, you know, down in Peru, they celebrate birthdays in a big way. And we always had to separate one week for his birthday because every part of the parish wanted to celebrate his birthday because he was so loved by everybody. So we used to have a whole week of birthday celebrations for him, which says something about the way he connected.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Yes, I wonder what his birthday party is going to look like now that he's a Pope. Father John Lydon, thank you so much. Fascinating to get your perspective. Congratulations to you and to your friend.

LYDON: Thank you very much. It's a blessing for the whole church and for the world, not just our Catholic church, but I think for the world.

SANCHEZ: Thanks for being with us. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, more coverage from Rome, the selection of a new Pope, the first American in history.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There he is. And the applause.

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[14:35:00]

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KEILAR: Moments ago, President Trump reacted to the news of the first American pope being named.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you planning to meet the pope in the near future?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They've already called.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: THEY'VE already called. When is that? Do you have a time?

TRUMP: They've already spoken to us and we'll see what happens. But again, to have the Pope from the United States of America, that's a great honor. That's a great honor.

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SANCHEZ: A great honor, President Trump there says.

Joining us now to discuss his assistant professor of sociology at Loyola University, Chicago and director of the McNamara Center for the Study of Religion, Father Patrick Gilger. Also with us is Stephen White, the executive director of the Catholic Project.

Thank you both for being with us. Father, first to you. I mean, what's your reaction to this news, especially where you are right now?

REV. PATRICK GILGER, ASST. PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY, CHICAGO: Well, thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here. I have to say I'm feeling very overwhelmed.

When I heard the name announced in Latin, both the name of our new POPE, Leo XIV and the name of the Cardinal that he had been previously. My first reaction was to feel just full of energy and consolation. And then I have to admit, I just immediately started crying.

I felt totally overwhelmed that a man who is a missionary, obviously has a heart for the poor, is a son of St. Augustine and a son of the city of Chicago where I live and work. I'm just so touched that the Cardinals have found a man from the United States of America who has given his life to Jesus as an American, worthy of stepping into this role of being the Pope of our global church.

KEILAR: And Steve, you are also a Chicago native. So that's really interesting. Talk to us a little bit about this because the papal conclave is always full of surprises. And this did not disappoint in that regard.

STEPHEN WHITE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE CATHOLIC PROJECT, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY: Yes, it's really remarkable. You're going to hear that a lot. It's hard to overstate how sort of surprising and overwhelming this is.

You know, I saw the news sitting in my office over at Catholic University. I've been telling people all week, yes, there's a chance it could be American, but it's mostly something you just say to have something to talk about for an American audience. This is really remarkable.

[14:40:04]

It will be interesting to see, when he stepped out on the loggia, there were a couple of things that I noticed immediately.

First, the way he was dressed was sort of a nod to a kind of continuity with popes who came before Pope Francis. Pope Francis famously did without the mozetta and without the stole. Pope Leo came out wearing those, which is sort of a nod to continuity with an older tradition in the church.

The first thing he talked about was the joy of the risen Christ at Easter. So I think those two things signaled. And then he went on to talk about Pope Francis himself.

He mentioned synodality a couple times, a church that walks together. So it seems to me, just from those first sort of hints, that this is a pope who will be sort of in continuity with Pope Francis but also seeking to keep continuity with everything that came before Francis.

SANCHEZ: And Stephen, talk to us about the significance of the time he spent in Peru. This is decades that he spent essentially spreading Catholicism in these communities, and being a part of the global South, and representing perhaps a different view of the world than I think the church traditionally has had in its leadership.

WHITE: Yes, one of the reasons we always say it's not going to be a pope from the United States is precisely because there's not a lot of people who want to give the United States one more thing to be in charge of. But he sort of had the loophole, right? He had spent so much of his ministry in Latin America, in Peru.

He's obviously fluent in Spanish. He's also fluent in Italian. And he had Roman experience, too.

So he checks a lot of boxes. So he knows the church from a lot of different perspectives. The positioning he held coming into the conclave, upon the death of Pope Francis, he lost the job.

But he was the prefect for the dicastery for bishops. So he was, next to the Pope, the most important person in the church for choosing new bishops throughout the church. So he's got experience in Rome, but also a knowledge of the episcopate and the bishops around the world as well.

KEILAR: And Father, we don't know exactly what kind of Pope he's going to be, right? Part of the thing about being the Pope is that it can be personality-driven. People get to know the Pope almost as a person, the way they speak.

They are very individual. And so I wonder, and we just heard from Father John Lydon, who had been a housemaid of his in Peru. And he said that he expects there will be continuity with Francis, but that he is going to speak about things differently.

I wonder what you're expecting.

GILGER: You know, I wish I had a perfect answer for that. But I really want to affirm what Father Lydon said, is that we will await what God will want to give the church and the world through this new man. But I also really want to pick up on a couple words that you just said and the question that you raised about voice. And then I want to add the word face to that.

So the pope for us as the church, within the Catholic Church, is really the voice and the face of Christ for all of us around the globe. Now, of course, he's not the only one.

There are many who serve that role. But he is a singular figure. And so I felt, for me, watching him step out onto the balcony there and address the crowd, what I wanted to do was to listen, yes, to the translation, like my Italian is pretty poor, but I wanted to listen to the way he spoke.

What did his voice sound like? In order to let my heart and my mind respond to the question, who is this person through whom Christ is speaking to me now? What is his face like?

And there were a couple of shots of him in profile where he was receiving the applause, the blessing, the affirmation of the people gathered there in the piazza. And you could see just the Adam's apple of his throat catching. He was not in tears. I was in tears. But you could see the emotion that he was moved with, the gratitude that he had for the kind of reception he was receiving. All of those things speak to me that he's a man who knows how to be attentive to people.

And I think that's going to be the kind of person who's going to be able to be attentive to the needs of the church around the world.

KEILAR: It was very clear that he was feeling the emotion as we just saw pictures from the crowd there in St. Peter's Square. They certainly were as well. Father Gilger, Steve White, thank you so much to both of you. Really appreciate it.

And we do have much more of our breaking news coverage ahead. Stay with CNN for that.

[14:45:00]

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KEILAR: A truly remarkable moment today at the Vatican for the first time in the Catholic Church's history, the Pope is an American. Pope Leo XIV, introduced to the world at St. Peter's Square just a short time ago, a Chicago native formerly known as Cardinal Robert Prevost.

SANCHEZ: It took cardinals just two days to make their decision, elevating Pope Leo to lead the world's 1.4 billion Catholics and his first message to the masses, peace.

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POPE LEO XIV: Peace be with you all.

Dearest brothers and sisters, This is the first preachings of the Resurrected Christ, the Good Shepherd who has given up his life for God, and I should also like this greeting of peace to enter our hearts and your families and to all those people, wherever they are, all peoples throughout the world. Peace be with you.

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KEILAR: We're joined now by Father John Maria Devaney, a Dominican friar and host of Sirius XM's The Catholic Channel. What do you think? This is not what anyone we spoke to was expecting.

REV. JOHN MARIA DEVANEY, CATHOLIC PRIEST, PAPAL MISSIONARY OF MERCY: Brianna and Boris, good afternoon to you. What can I say? An American Pope, I'm shocked, you know.

We all had our ideas, we were all talking about who could be this or who could be that, and we think of the papacy, you know, now in the last 60 years, so global, and never thinking we'd get somebody, a North American, you know? So I can't lie, I'm in shock, but I'm also, as an American citizen, I'm delighted, you know?

SANCHEZ: Father, what would you say are the biggest challenges that he faces right away? Because I imagine he's going to get to work fairly soon.

DEVANEY: Well, I think the biggest thing, Boris, the challenge he has right away is to remember that he's the Pope. The fact that, oh my gosh, I'm the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics, I think that's his biggest challenge. You know, the Church moves throughout time, right? And you know,

Christ said to us, the poor will always be with you. He even said that there will never be full peace in this earth, but we can be instruments of peace and we can try to build a better world. I'm not just trying to talk to you in plateaus, that's something a Pope has to do.

And with this first words from the balcony on St. Peter's there, being a message of peace is beautiful.

KEILAR: And as you said, he's a North American. He's also a South American. He ended up getting Peruvian citizenship, spending more than a decade in Peru.

Of course, an American for longer, we should note. And that certainly may define him. And I think it will as he is the first American Pope.

But what do you think he's going to bring from spending that much time working in Peru and with poorer communities in Peru? What's he going to bring to the papacy with that?

DEVANEY: Brianna, that's a good question. And let me share this with you. There's something very important to remember.

He's a friar. He is part of a global religious order called the Augustinian order. The Augustinians came out of the same time period that the Franciscan friars came out of that we the Dominican friars came out of.

And friars always spend their time in city. Friars are not monks. We don't brew beer.

We drink the beer, but we don't brew the beer that the monks make. But that friars, importantly, are always in the city. They're in the thick of it, yet we live monastically.

Now, of course, he has those roots in him. He's taken vows, just like Pope Francis did when he was a Jesuit, of poverty, chastity, and obedience, just like I did. Now, of course, the Pope only has to answer to the Pope. He doesn't answer to the Augustinian order ever since he was a bishop.

But what's important to remember, too, is that his vows and his simplicity of how friars are to live, like Jesuits who take vows as well, that's going to echo into his papacy. Now, interestingly enough, too, he's a canon lawyer, which he has a deep inner working of how the church's law works. So that's really amazing.

Also, as you said, Brianna, his time in Peru, the heart of a missionary, that's self-sacrifice, to go to a country that doesn't have all the comforts of the United States and to go under his vow of obedience, as he did as an Augustinian friar, most likely to take that assignment as a missionary. There's going to be many dynamic levels to this papacy.

SANCHEZ: I wonder, Father, what you think of the name choice, Leo XIV, because obviously in choosing a name, that sends a message about his vision for the church and for himself within the church.

DEVANEY: Well, the first Pope Leo reigned in the 5th century, and we call him Leo the Great. There's not too many greats in the Catholic Church. There's only about three or four people we've looked back to, both men and women, that we've called the great.

And for him now to be number 14, obviously the legacy of the first Pope Leo echoes all the way here now 1,500 years later.

[14:55:00]

I think most recently we've looked to Leo XIII, who had a lot to say on the church's social teachings. Also Leo XIII looked at the American church in a very particular way.

There was a letter that Leo XIII wrote against -- not against but about a heresy that was called Americanism. This is something you're going to hear a lot about, I imagine, the next couple of days in light of the fact that it's the first American Pope and his predecessor. So yes, there's a lot he can stand on and a lot he can build on as a Pope Leo.

SANCHEZ: Father John Maria Devaney, great to get your perspective. Thanks for joining us.

DEVANEY: Thanks a lot. And of course, we'll be on Sirius XM tonight, the Catholic Channel, with great live coverage. Please join us if you're a subscriber.

SANCHEZ: Great plug. Great plug. Appreciate you, Father.

Our breaking news coverage of the first American elected Pope continues after a short break. Don't go anywhere.

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