As silence and stillness calmed the eager world, Cardinal Protodeacon Dominique Mamberti, overlooking a sea of tens of thousands of teary-eyed viewers in St. Peter’s Square, introduced Catholics and non-faithful to the newest pontiff.
American Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost, was elected to take the papal seat and succeed the deceased Pope Francis on May 8, 2025, after four rounds of conclave voting by 133 members of the College of Cardinals.
As the world explores both the tender and commanding qualities that make Pope Leo XIV papabile and worthy of the Vicar of Christ title, one place, a small place of around 10,000 people, is beaming with pride for the newly elected Chicago-native.
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“It’s a super-happy day for all Catholics to have a new pope,” Patrick Brennan, chair of Catholic Legal Studies at Villanova University, told Fox News Digital.
“I was sitting in the studio when I discovered, as everyone else did, that it was a Villanova graduate who was now the pope.”
Pope Leo XIV is a graduate of the Class of 1977.
Villanova University, a private Catholic university 12 miles outside of Philadelphia, enrolls just 6,700 undergraduate students and 3,100 graduate and law students, according to its website.
“It’s a hometown boy not just makes good but breaks all the molds,” Brennan said. “We have an American pope.”
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Pope Leo XIV is the first pope to ever be elected from the United States.
Despite skepticism that the Sacred College would vote for an American pope, Brennan says he was “thrilled” to hear the announcement of Prevost.
“The people that I know who know him think that he’s a wonderful priest,” Brennan told Fox News Digital. “He’s been a wonderful member of the Augustinian order, and we know that Pope Francis has entrusted him with great responsibilities. It’s a happy day.”
Prevost was created a cardinal by Pope Francis in 2023.
The Augustinian religious order, formerly known as the Order of Saint Augustine and deeply rooted in the beliefs and teachings of influential theologian Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo, was established in the 13th century.
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“The Augustinians are not as well-known in the United States as the Jesuits are an important part of the life of the American church,” Brennan said.
Pope Francis, a Jesuit and the first to serve as a pontificate, made history as the first member of a religious order in centuries.
Pope Leo XIV has followed suit historically.
“Though they don’t have the presence that the Jesuits do, they do an amazing job,” Brennan said of the Augustinians. “This will give a huge vote of confidence for them about the work they’re doing in the Church.”
In 1842, the Augustinians founded Villanova University in downtown Philadelphia until later relocating to suburban Philly, where the college is surrounded by lush greenery and beautiful architecture.
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“When [Pope Leo XIV] would have been in Villanova in the 1970s, it was a beautiful suburban campus of a small Catholic liberal arts college with high standards and a great love of the Catholic tradition and a whole lot of Villanova spirit,” Brennan said. “When I came to Villanova, I was stunned, and I still am by the incredible enthusiasm Villanova students and alumni have for their experience and for the Villanova community.”
Pope Leo XIV celebrated his electoral triumph by praying the prayer of the blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with the world.
“I think that that was one of the ways he symbolized his traditional piety,” Brennan said.
“His desire to signal to the world that he’s a Catholic who prays the way that Catholics traditionally do. Pope Francis was known for his great devotion to the blessed Virgin Mary, which is part of the reason he made the unusual decision to be buried in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.”
Pope Francis, shortly after becoming the Bishop of Rome in 2013, revealed his burial plans.
“Choosing to pray the Hail Mary was a signal of continuity and piety,” Brennan said of Pope Leo XIV.
Finally, for the namesake, Brennan says he envisions the selection was made as a symbolic gesture.
“He jumped over a whole century, back to the name of a pope who died in 1903 who left the Church a huge legacy of deep understanding of the place of a human person and the Catholic Church in the modern world,” Brennan said.
“I think Pope Leo XIV, by choosing that name, is attaching himself to a legacy that he can, and I believe intends to, open for a world that’s changed a great deal and needs new light and understanding of the kind he probably associates and finds in the world of Pope Leo XIII,” Brennan said.
