NEW YORK CITY (PIX11) – Dozens of New Yorkers are outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral celebrating the election of an American pope.
Bells are ringing at the cathedral on Fifth Avenue on Thursday afternoon, just moments after Cardinal Robert Prevost was announced as the new pope.
Prevost, a 69-year-old member of the Augustinian religious order, took the name Leo XIV.
Prevost had been a leading candidate for the papacy except, but there had long been a taboo against a U.S. pope, given the country's geopolitical power already wielded in the secular sphere.
But Prevost, a Chicago native, was seemingly eligible because he’s also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
This story comprises reporting from the Associated Press.
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Emily Rahhal is a digital reporter who has covered New York City since 2023 after reporting in Los Angeles for years. She joined PIX11 in 2024. See more of her work here and follow her on Twitter here.
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