The First American Pope: Pope Leo XIV

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.4 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today, Robert Prevost has become the first American Pope, and will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

Adam is joined by the BBC’s Religion editor Aleem Maqbool to talk through how the news broke from the Vatican, and what we know about Chicago-born Prevost who worked for many years as a missionary in Peru before being made an archbishop there

And, the UK and US have announced a tariff agreement. Tariffs have been removed from UK steel and aluminium, plus reduced on car exports. In exchange the UK has allowed the US more access to certain markets. Adam unpicks this afternoon's made-for-TV announcement with Faisal Islam, the BBC’s economic editor.

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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Miranda Slade with Rufus Gray. The technical producer was Mike Regaard. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The editor is Sam Bonham.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.1	Hello, it's just before tea time on Thursday afternoon, the 8th of May.
0:09.9	The scene in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican is quite amazing.
0:15.4	Beautiful late afternoon sunshine.
0:17.6	A crowd of thousands of jubilant people from all around the world. There's a marching
0:22.4	band. There's the Swiss guards who guard the Vatican and have done for centuries. And crucially,
0:28.6	there was white smoke drifting across it from that chimney just outside the Sistine Chapel,
0:34.8	which means the cardinals who've been sequestered in their conclave for two days have selected a new Pope.
0:41.6	And we were watching the quite highly produced TV broadcast from St. Peter Square with a camera on the balcony as we're waiting to see who that group of men, all under 80, have chosen, is the next leader of the world's more than a billion Catholics.
1:00.0	It is really quite an electric moment.
1:06.0	And here he comes, and it is Robert Francis Previst, the first American ever in history to be Pope.
1:19.3	He was born in Chicago.
1:21.0	He is 69 years old, although he spent a lot of his life living in Peru.
1:26.9	But yeah, the main thing is we have an American Pope,
1:30.5	and he's going to be known as Leo the 14th,
1:32.9	because of course they never use their actual names.
1:35.2	Right, we'll discuss what this all means
1:36.7	and who Robert Prevest actually is on this episode of Newscast.
1:40.6	Oh, and also there was a talking of American-related things.
1:43.3	There was a trade deal or a prosperity deal inked with the UK today.
1:47.7	So there's plenty to talk about.
1:50.0	Newscast.
	...

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