As Robert Prevost, he voted in at least three Republican primaries — 2012, 2014 and 2016. The first and last of those votes would have included presidential candidates. In 2016, Trump won the Illinois primary on his way to collecting the party’s presidential nomination. It is not known how the Pope then voted.

Despite the Republican leanings, some of Trump’s key lieutenants have already attacked the new pontiff. Steve Bannon, a cheerleader for the Trump administration, described him as an “anti-Trump Pope”.

Laura Loomer, a right-wing podcaster and occasional Trump adviser, was more direct. She posted on X about the “WOKE MARXIST POPE” .

VATICAN MEDIA/AP

Hamas has issued a statement of congratulations to Pope Leo XIV, which expressed hope that he would follow the path of his predecessor Pope Francis in “defending the oppressed and taking active steps in international forums to stop the crime of genocide and ethnic cleansing committed by the Zionist occupation against children, women and unarmed civilians in Gaza”.

Pope Francis was a vocal advocate for an end to the war in Gaza. Every night from the beginning of the war in October 2023 until his death, he phoned the Holy Family Church in Gaza to speak to church leaders and sheltering Palestinians.

In his final Easter address, he called for a ceasefire in the territory. As a final act, he donated one of his popemobiles to be converted into a mobile health clinic for the children of Gaza.

Pope Leo XIV watched the film Conclave before being elected as pontiff, one of his brothers has revealed.

John Prevost told NBC News that the pair had spoken recently and he had asked his brother if he had watched the film — set around the political intrigue in the Vatican as cardinals seek to elect a new pope and starring Ralph Fiennes — so he knew “how to behave” if he was elected.

Robert Provost, who became Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, then told his brother that he had just finished watching the film.

John also revealed liked to play the game, Wordle, online. “It’s something to keep his mind off life in the real world,” said John.

The Vatican has set May 18 for Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration Mass in St Peter’s Square, the Vatican said in a statement on Friday.

The new Pope will also hold his first general audience on May 21.

The Pope addressing the crowd after his papacy was announced

AFP

The pontiff has confirmed all top Vatican officials in their current roles on a temporary basis, giving him time to decide before making definitive appointments, the Vatican said in a statement.

All senior officials, appointed for five-year terms, serve at the pleasure of the pope. A new pontiff usually rolls over existing mandates, at least initially, before deciding whether to change key positions.

The Pope supported the baseball team, Chicago White Sox, as a boy growing up in the United States.

“Well would you look at that … Congratulations to Chicago’s own Pope Leo XIV,” the team wrote on its X account.

After he was elected as Pope, a debate erupted over which of the city’s rival baseball teams. But his brother confirmed it was the White Sox, not the Chicago Cubs.

VATICAN MEDIA/AFP

The Pope used his first homily to warn against reducing Jesus to “a kind of charismatic leader or superman”, in an apparent message to evangelical Christians.

“There are many settings in which Jesus, although appreciated as a man, is reduced to a kind of charismatic leader or superman. This is true not only among non-believers but also among many baptised Christians, who thus end up living — at this level — in a state of practical atheism,” he told a Mass with cardinals.

The website Silere Non Possum described the Pope as a “providential” choice, praising him as a canon lawyer, “thus, a man of justice, of balance, of fidelity to ecclesial form”.

The election of Pope Leo XIV was immediately welcomed by a conservative Catholic website that had been a fierce critic of Pope Francis’s papacy, describing the cardinals’ choice as “God’s Caress for His Church” in its headline.

“The Holy Spirit often seems to let us wander through the maze of our thoughts and human designs. But then, at the right time, He intervenes — with that power that ‘grabs us by the hair’ to pull us back just before we fall. This election feels like one of those moments when the hand of God reaches out and, with fatherly resolve, sets us back on the right path,” Silere Non Possum (I cannot remain silent, in Latin) commented.

The election reminded Catholics “that the Lord does not withhold what we need. There could have been no better choice,” it said.

In his Mass, the Pope told the congregation that he deplored the “lack of faith” and the pursuit of “power, pleasure”.

It was the first time he made public remarks in English, after he spoke in Italian and Spanish only in his first comments to the world from the loggia of St Peter’s Basilica on Thursday.

Pope Leo XIV has addressed cardinals in English at the start of his first Mass, which is being held in the Sistine Chapel.

He spoke briefly in English at the start of his homily: “I will sing a new song to the Lord because he has done marvels, indeed, not just with me but with all of us. My brother cardinals — as we celebrate this morning I invite you to recognise the marvels the Lord has done.

“The blessings the Lord continue to pour out on all of us. Through the ministry of Peter you have called me to carry that cross and be blessed with that mission and I know I can rely on each and everyone of you to walk with me as we continue as a Church, as a community of friends of Jesus, as believers to announce the good news, to announce the Gospel.”

By AN Wilson

As Mrs Thatcher said on an earlier occasion — Rejoice! Rejoice! Plato had a motto written above the door of his academy in Athens: Let no one enter who has not studied geometry [maths]. The new Pope studied maths at Villanova University in Philadelphia, which means he is grounded in the purity of logic and the beauty of truths which, if demonstrable, must be acceptable not only to people who share his religious beliefs, but to the whole world.

He has chosen the name Leo XIV. The last pope to bear this name, in his encyclical Rerum novarum of 1891, denounced capitalism and firmly placed the Church, where it has been since Jesus proclaimed that his mission was to the poor, on the side of outcasts and those at the bottom of society. Many believe that the encyclical was, in fact, written by that great English lefty (Harrow and Balliol), Cardinal Henry Manning.

• Read in full: Like Francis, the new pope intends to champion the needy

As he greeted the world on Thursday, Pope Leo XVI wore a cross with a removable cover that contains the bones of saints.

The cross was given to him by his religious order, the Augustinians, when he was made a cardinal in 2023 and it contains tiny pieces of the bones of three key Augustinian saints: St Augustine, whose writings inspired the order’s foundation, his mother St Monica and St Thomas of Villanova, a 16th-century Spanish Augustinian archbishop.

The Pope wearing the cross

ANDREW MEDICHINI/AP

Founded in 1244 in Tuscany, the Order of St Augustine was inspired by the 5th-century writings of Augustine of Hippo.

The cross also contains the bone relics of two other important Augustinians: Anselmo Polanco, a beatified Spanish bishop who was executed during the Spanish Civil War in 1939, and Giuseppe Bartolomeo Menocchio, an 18th-century Italian bishop.

The relics were inlaid inside the cross — which can be opened — by Antonino Cottone, a relic expert who works with the Vatican and religious orders.

“I didn’t expect to see Pope Leo XIV wearing it yesterday. It was an extremely emotional moment when I saw it,” he told the Times.

The King has sent a private message to Pope Leo XIV.

Buckingham Palace said Charles congratulated him on his election as the 267th pontiff and Bishop of Rome.

A spokesman said that the message included “the most sincere good wishes for his Pontificate”.

The Pope has begun celebrating his first Mass as pontiff in the Sistine Chapel with the cardinals who elected him.

Pope Leo XIV is the first American pontiff, but the cardinals who elected him were not the first to have such an idea.

The Italian film director Paolo Sorrentino got there first in the TV series The Young Pope, where a New York cardinal, Lenny Belardo — played by Jude Law — is a surprise conclave winner who takes the name of Pius XIII.

Belardo, who had been abandoned as a child, turns out to be a disruptive leader, who decrees that common people are not worthy to gaze upon the Pope’s face and reinstates the wearing of the tiara, a papal crown that was abandoned by Pope Paul VI in 1963. He is also keen to restore the temporal power of the Vatican.

Highly conservative and traumatised by a difficult childhood, Law’s pope is unlikely to provide much guidance on what to expect from his real life equivalent.

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has wished Pope Leo XIV “success in fostering hope and reconciliation among all faiths”.

ABIR SULTAN/AFP

Relations between Israel and the Holy See have been strained since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Pope Francis regularly criticised Israel’s military actions in Gaza, condemning reports of famine. He also made daily calls to Christians in Gaza, contacting those sheltering at Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City to ask about safety and access to food and water.

President Herzog of Israel said that his country looked forward to welcoming the new pope to the Holy Land and expressed hope his papacy would be “one of building bridges and understanding between all faiths and peoples”.

The tricky choices facing the new pontiff will come thick and fast, starting with where he wants to live.

His predecessor, Pope Francis, swapped the isolation of the Vatican’s papal apartment for a room at the bustling Casa Santa Marta, the Vatican’s residence for visiting prelates.

It is a tough question, with consequences. By moving back into the regal papal apartment, will the new pope risk looking aloof after Francis’s man-of-the-people choice of accommodation? Or will it send a positive message to cardinals who alleged that Francis ran the Vatican from the Casa Santa Marta with an inner circle of trusted assistants, ignoring the city state’s machinery of government?

• Read in full: From choosing his residence to addressing declining church attendance

Another brother of Pope Leo XIV, John Prevost, has told the New York Times that he is a critic of President Trump’s crackdown on migration and could challenge the US leader on his policies.

He said: “I don’t think he’ll stay quiet for too long if he has something to say … I know he’s not happy with what’s going on with immigration. I know that for a fact.”

A man reads a newspaper with the picture of newly elected pope at St Peter’s Square

JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The Pope’s first public appearance on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica has been seen as transmitting a quiet strength. His decision to wear a red shoulder cape and red and gold stole was described as a break with the “neo-Franciscan pauperism” of his predecessor.

The Italian newspaper La Stampa said his facial expression as he delivered his speech alternated between “the seraphic and understandable emotion, without the latter ever gaining the upper hand”. The body language of the first American pope, who is known to be shy, had expressed the strength and control of a pacifist warrior, the paper added.

The cardinals elected a compatriot of “the living meme” President Trump, but his attitude to social issues is poles apart from “the narrations of the ‘big tech’ oligarchs and Maga populism”, it added.

In a post on X in February, the American cardinal Robert Prevost retweeted an article that attacked JD Vance after the US vice-president attempted to ­justify the Trump administration’s policy of deporting undocumented ­migrants by invoking church teaching.

Vance had told an interviewer, “There is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritise the rest of the world. A lot of the ­far-left has completely inverted that.”
Prevost reposted a link to an article in a Catholic publication headlined: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”

• Read in full: New pope has already hit out at Trump administration

Louis Prevost, the new pope’s older brother, has described him as “down to earth and “smart as a whip” with a good sense of humour. He told ABC News he had watched the moment his brother was introduced as Pope. “My wife called to tell me there’s white smoke from the chapel,” he said.

Pope Leo XIV after being elected

STOYAN NENOV/REUTERS

“They started reading his name, and when he went, ‘blah, blah, blah, Roberto,’ immediately I knew – that’s Rob … I was just thankful I was still in bed lying down, because I might have fallen down,” he said. He added that he got out of bed and started “dancing around like an idiot”.

Another brother, John, has said the Pope “played priest” as a child, using an ironing board as the altar.

Peggy Wurtz, who went to school with the pontiff in Chicago, said: “He was super smart and super quiet. There isn’t a bad thing you can say about him. He is pure, pure, this guy was destined to be pope.”

• Read in full: Chicago-born cardinal elected to lead Catholic Church

The Pope was elected after four votes in the conclave, matching Pope Benedict’s quick election in 2005 and beating Pope Francis, who needed five votes in 2013.

The Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera claimed that his election was made possible when the Italian cardinal Pietro Parolin, a firm favourite before the conclave, realised he was not going to get the 89 votes he needed for a winning — a two-thirds majority — and backed out, advising his supporters to vote for the American candidate.

It echoed the conclave in 2013, when the Italian favourite, Angelo Scola, looked unlikely to get a majority in early voting, prompting a consensus to form around the Argentinian Jorge Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis.

The Sistine Chapel

PIER PAOLO CITO/AP

The papacy of Pope Leo XIV begins today as he celebrates mass with the College of Cardinals at 11am in the Sistine Chapel — the spot where he was elected pontiff yesterday afternoon.

On Sunday, the American pope will then lead the Regina Caeli prayer at noon from the central balcony of St Peter’s basilica — where he greeted the world after his election. On Monday, he will address Vatican accredited journalists at 10am at the Paul VI Hall.

Last night he was back at his Vatican apartment taking selfies and leading a short prayer, and probably packing his bags.

We now wait to see whether he will move into the Vatican’s papal apartment, which looks on to St Peter’s Square, or if he copies his predecessor Pope Francis and chooses instead to live in the Casa Santa Marta residence used by visiting prelates.