NPR · 12 hours ago

The Inside Story of How Robert Prevost Became Pope Leo

Before Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV - the first American ever elected to lead the Catholic Church - his closest friends were asking whether they could still email him. That question, posed by a high school friend who'd always called him "Bob," captures something essential about the man who would inherit one of the most consequential roles on earth: he moved through decades of deepening responsibility without shedding the ordinary warmth that made people want to stay close. "I just leave everything in the Lord's hands," he wrote back, then added, with characteristic lightness, that since he didn't expect to be changing addresses, the emails could keep coming. What this account of the 2025 conclave quietly reveals is how little Prevost resembled the political creatures that papal elections are often assumed to require - he didn't work rooms, didn't campaign, and reportedly slept well after reading that an American could never be elected. His brother John's prayer the night before the conclave - moving from *please, no* to *not my will, but what's good for the church* - mirrors the posture of the man himself, and says something about what it looks like when a life of faith is not a performance but a practice.