Robert Francis Prevost: the moderate, good humoured first American pope

Colleagues recall a calm and grounded leader capable of moderating between factions, with a strong connection to his predecessor

Robert Francis Prevost – who has chosen the papal name Leo XIV – may not be the Latin American Jesuit wildcard that his predecessor, Pope Francis, was, but his election is similarly historic.

In the figure of the 69-year-old former head of the Augustinian order, the Roman Catholic church has its very first US leader. Until Thursday evening, the idea of the fisherman’s ring being slipped on to a North American hand was seen as a fairly distant possibility. The Vatican’s long-standing opposition to a US pope stemmed largely from the optics of having a pontiff from both a political superpower and a country with such a hegemonic cultural and secular global influence.

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