Inside the election of the first American pope

Sidebar

The Washington Post

True Crime, News, Politics

4.1 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode, The Washington Post's Libby Casey, Rhonda Colvin and James Hohmann are joined by religion reporter Michelle Boorstein and Rome bureau chief Anthony Faiola to discuss the papal conclave and the election of the first American pope, Leo XIV.

The crew breaks down the process the cardinals followed, then dives into the politics of the conclave: How cardinals make themselves candidates, and how they try to elevate their positions behind the scenes while adhering to the strict traditions surrounding the process.

And finally, the crew breaks down whether the cardinals take American politics, or world politics, into account at all when choosing a new leader for the Catholic Church.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Look what happened. Is this crazy? We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in the history.
0:08.6	Make America great victory. How can you be against them?
0:16.8	This is Sidebar from the Washington Post. I'm Libby Casey. White Smoke over the Vatican, a new Pope, Leo the 14th. And it's an American for the first time ever. Now, he's chosen the name Leo the 14th, but up until now, he's been known as Cardinal Robert Prevost. He comes from Chicago originally, but has worked all over the world. Today in Sidebar, we're talking
0:39.5	about something full of politics, intrigue, power, rich with history, and it's not American
0:45.7	politics. We're taking a break from that. And instead, we're talking about the selection of a new
0:49.8	Pope, which happened Thursday evening, Rome time. I'm joined as always by James Holman and Rhonda Colvin.
0:56.0	Sadly, we are not in Rome.
0:57.6	We are here in Washington.
0:59.2	But let's talk about Rhonda what we know about Cardinal Prevost, who's now known as Leo the 14th.
1:04.4	Right.
1:04.9	So Cardinal Prevost, he is 69 years old.
1:07.5	Of course, he's U.S. born from Chicago.
1:10.2	He graduated with a degree in mathematics from
1:12.4	Villanova. Villanova. He also studied canon law at Pontifical University in Rome and became an
1:19.2	ordained priest in 1982. But a lot of his life's work is centered in his Times of Missionary in Peru.
1:26.7	There he spent about 20 years in some of the poorest
1:30.0	territories of the country and even became a naturalized citizen there. So we're learning now as we
1:35.7	are getting used to a new Pope what his time was like there and how close it is to his heart.
1:42.0	During Pope Francis's tenure, Cardinal Provost worked with
1:46.1	Francis on the appointment of bishops in the church, and he has seen as someone who will likely
1:51.2	be in the mold of Francis and somewhat build on the priorities that Pope Francis had.
1:57.6	Yeah, he's really a pragmatist. He's someone who's seen as able to balance the traditionalists
	...

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