Breaking: Conclave Elects American Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV

• Pope Leo XIV has been elected as the new leader of the Catholic Church, being the first American to hold the position in centuries
• The new pope, who is 69, was born in Chicago in 1955 and holds both American and Peruvian citizenship
• According to Vatican City, Pope Leo XIV had spent his missionary years in Peru, and his emergence followed the death of Pope Francis

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Vatican, Italy - The Vatican has announced the election of Robert Francis Prevost as the new pope of the Catholic Church. Prevost will be the first pope to be elected from the United States.

Prevost was described as a moderate who was close to the late Pope Francis. He was said to have spent his missionary years in Peru.

The American who has been elected as the 267th pontiff of the Catholic Church has taken the papal name Leo XIV.

Who is Pope Leo XIV

The 69-year-old pontiff was born in Chicago in 1955 and is to be known as Pope Leo XIV.

The new pope holds both American and Peruvian citizenship, and also serves as a member of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

According to information posted on the website of the College of Cardinals, Pope Leo holds similar views as the late Pope Francis.

Below is the announcement:

Nationality no barrier under canon law - Expert

An Italian-based canon law expert, Fabiola Lacagnina, has confirmed that the election of an American-born pope does not violate any legal norms of the Catholic Church.

“No, canon law does not place any explicit restrictions on the pope's nationality,” she told Legit.ng on the historic election of Pope Leo XIV.

The lawyer explained that while tradition once favoured Italian popes, especially due to the central role of the Roman Curia, this preference is not mandated by law.

“The election of a non-Italian pope is fully in line with the missionary nature of the Church, which is by its very vocation universal, called to proclaim the Gospel in every culture and to reflect this catholicity also in its highest institutional choices," she said.

Is Pope Leo XIV married?

Like many other popes, Leo XIV was not married. There has been heated debate within the church on the requirement for clergy to remain celibate. For centuries, there have been consistent calls for them to accept married men and women into the priesthood.

However, BBC Pidgin reported that their insistence that clergy should remain celibate has never always been the case. In the early Christian Church, many priests and more than one pope have gotten married.

Why Popes don't get married

The process of electing a new pope has been technical, and those elected are always unmarried. However, the road to celibacy in the Catholic Church has now become uniform and a rule, which is being enforced in the church.

In AD325, the Council of Nicea, Roman Emperor Constantine, discussed the practice of priestly celibacy, and by AD692, the Council of Trullo made it mandatory for bishops to remain celibate, though not everyone followed the practice.

Clerical celibacy has been one of the major factors that contributed to the "Great Schism" between the Catholic and Orthodox churches in the 11th Century.

The 11th-century Gregorian reforms and the two Lateran councils of 1123 and 1139 enforced the practice of staying away from sexual relations more seriously, and finally, celibacy became the defining feature of the Western-rite Catholic priesthood in the reformation era of the 16th Century and the Council of Trent (1545 to 1563).

List of popes in the last 110 years

Legit.ng earlier reported that Pope Francis has become the 10th leader of the world of the Catholic Church in the last 110 years in history.

The late Francis died on Monday, April 21, which was the same day as Easter Monday, just after delivering Easter Sunday's sermon.

The list of popes who have ruled the Catholic Church world in the last 110 years, from Pope Pius X to Francis, has been compiled.

Editorial assistant Ololade Olatimehin provided exclusive commentary from a canon law expert for this report.

Proofreading by Nkem Ikeke, copy editor at Legit.ng.