American Catholics from coast to coast were thrilled to learn the next pope was one of their very own: Pope Leo XIV, formerly Cardinal Robert F Prevost, an American from Chicago.
“More happy than I can be,” Veronica Canadas told OSV News while sitting in her white cab outside Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.
Canadas, a 30-year Chicago resident originally from Ecuador, said she was “even more happy” to know Pope Leo XIV is a Chicago native and a Spanish-speaker who spent time in Peru and knows Latin American culture.
Students at Villanova University, Pope Leo XIV’s alma mater, freaked out when they learned that the new pope was an alumnus.
“We all just went absolutely nuts,” said Noel Villepigue, a freshman from Weston, Connecticut.
The election of an American pope was welcomed as an important spiritual validation for Catholics in the US Sharon Clark Chang, a parishioner at St Leo the Great Catholic Church in Fairfax, Virginia, said it was clear—at last in her lifetime—that being American was no longer perceived by the College of Cardinals as being “somehow deficient in holiness.”