History has demonstrated once again that those who enter the Sistine Chapel as “future popes” often leave as cardinals. Although the man whom we will now know as Pope Leo XIV was included in some lists of papabile, he was considered by many a “dark horse” candidate owing to his American origins.
Nonetheless, Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost, sixty-nine, who wore the red mozzetta that Pope Francis discarded when he first came onto the loggia of St. Peter’s in 2013, is a Chicago-born Augustinian who has become an influential figure in Rome as the prefect for the Dicastery for Bishops (which oversees the selection of bishops worldwide). His reputation is that of a bridge-builder between the New World and the Old, and between Pope Francis’s vision and the wider Church. Theologically, Cardinal Prevost is considered center-moderate, very much aligned with Pope Francis’s pastoral priorities while holding firmly to the historic Church.
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