The first Pope of the World was Daniel Runde: What it was like inside St. Peter’s Square when the new pope was announced
The city of VATICAN. Thousands of people broke into cheers and tears when the words “Habemus papam!” rang out from the basilica’s loggia.
But soon the crowd in St. Peter’s Square fell to a hush, as the world waited for the next piece of careful choreography: a Latin pronouncement with the name of the cardinal who had just been elected as the new leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
The sound of shock was heard as Cardinal Robert Prevost’s name was announced. It was not a foregone conclusion that the new pope was from the United States.
With a slate of 133 cardinal electors from all over the world — including many from countries that have long had little or no representation in the College of Cardinals — there was speculation that the new pope could hail from the Global South.
“The last thing I imagined was an American pope,” said Daniel Runde, 21, a Catholic from the United States who was in St. Peter’s Square with two friends.
“Christ precedes us” is how he states. The world needs his light,” Pope Leo XIV said in his first address to the world as pontiff. “Humanity needs him as the bridge to be reached by God and by his love. Help us, too, and help each other to build a bridge, so we can be one people, always in peace.
There is a sense among some that an American pope — who leads a church that includes Catholics across the globe — could tip the balance of power even more toward the United States.
Though he is American, the new pope holds citizenship in Peru as well, where he lived and worked for many years. He even acknowledged his community there in Chiclayo, briefly switching to Spanish in his remarks.
“I thought it was really cool that he spoke in Spanish for a little bit as well,” said Runde. “It just alludes to how open he may be and reaching all corners of the Earth and not leaving some behind — like continuing what Francis did.”
The First Pope in Chicago, and Pope Leo XIV, in Chicago’s St. Peter’s Basilica — the “God’s work is done”
In the coming months, everyone will be watching to see how the new pope affects the church and how he’ll get the church moving in certain directions.
“I can’t say for sure, but it looked like someone who was going to crush it, when he watched a few minutes of him up there,” said Gleason.
Yes, I cried when I heard that Pope Leo XIV is from Chicago. And I thought of St. Peter’s Church in Chicago’s Loop, where I used to go to Mass now and then.
It was usually a 5 o’clock Mass. The people at the event were already wearing their work clothes. They stopped to pray as office workers from the skyscrapers passed them, heading home.
Marta, a cleaner in our office building, had told me about what was called “the cleaning crew Mass.” Marta was from Poland. When we all recited, along with the priest, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth…” you could hear accents around us from all over the world: Poland, Mexico, Italy, China, Lithuania, Ireland. It gave us a glimpse of the world.
I remember, too, the joy that Marta and others from Poland felt when Pope John Paul II, the first Polish pope, came on an official visit to Chicago, in 1979. I put a rosary from Marta in my coat pocket when I covered the Mass in Grant Park, and when I returned it to her, she clutched it to her chest and said, “I feel him here.”
When Pope Leo XIV came out to speak from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday, I thought of that other St. Peter’s, in Chicago. The working people at those Masses today might see Pope Leo, once known on the South Side as Father Bob, and tell themselves, “He has walked among us.”