Yes, though as the Vatican itself made clear, the second American pope, whose immediate predecessor also hailed from the same landmass stretching from southernmost Chile to northernmost Canada.
Other signs of continuity with Francis’s papacy soon emerged, to the delight of some and the dismay of others—including no small number of Prevost’s native countrymen. Leo pointedly used the words “synodality” and “dialogue.” He forcefully restated the Christian obligation to care for the vulnerable. In his May 10 address to the College of Cardinals, he called for renewal of “our complete commitment to the path that the universal Church has now followed for decades in the wake of the Second Vatican Council.” He then quoted Francis’s Evangelii gaudium, highlighting that document’s emphasis on, among other things, “the return to the primacy of Christ in proclamation”; collegiality and synodality; attention to the sensus fidei, including popular piety; care for the least and the rejected; and “dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities.”
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