How Pope Leo was elected: New details of dramatic conclave battle revealed
CNN
“Conclave” the movie provides a gripping, if fictional, behind-the-scenes look inside the secretive election of a new pope. But last year’s real-life conclave was just as dramatic, with plenty of plot twists, political battles among cardinals and a surprise outcome.
“Conclave” the movie provides a gripping, if fictional, behind-the-scenes look inside the secretive election of a new pope. But last year’s real-life conclave was just as dramatic, with plenty of plot twists, political battles among cardinals and a surprise outcome.
A new book lifts a lid on how, in May 2025, Pope Leo XIV was elected as the first US-born pope in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history. Its authors tell in previously unheard detail how Cardinal Robert Prevost, a low-key Augustinian friar from Chicago, had quietly garnered support from fellow cardinals as the conclave got underway but remained under the radar of wider attention as a serious candidate.
Gerard O’Connell, the Vatican correspondent for “America,” a Catholic magazine based in New York, and Elisabetta Piqué, a correspondent for Argentina’s “La Nacion” newspaper and a CNN contributor at the 2025 conclave, describe how an Italian frontrunner faded from contention while providing a breakdown of the voting inside the Sistine Chapel. They also report how the election of Prevost caught many by surprise, including senior figures in the Vatican. For years, the prospect of an American pope had seemed impossible because of the “military, economic and cultural power” of the US, one cardinal told them.
O’Connell and Piqué, a husband-and-wife reporting team, were longtime friends of Pope Francis, who had baptized their two children in Argentina while still a cardinal there and later also married the couple.
