Pope Leo XIV as a gift from God, Peru and me

It finally feels cool to be a Peruvian American former altar boy who went to Catholic high school and Catholic college.

- Carlos Lozada

I knew someday my time would come. The selection of Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, arrived, as my mother put it to me, as a gift from God. Though American-born, the new pope spent years working in my native Peru and even obtained Peruvian citizenship. “An American pope?” my wife asked, incredulous, staring at the television, when Prevost was announced. “A Peruvian pope!” I answered.

The new pope’s status as an American shocked me, and I immediately began to consider the politics and symbolism of the choice. What would this mean for the divides within the American Church, for the moral leadership of the United States in the world, for the legacy of Pope Francis? It was my reaction as a journalist, as an observer, peering ahead.

But Leo’s status as a Peruvian made me reach back. I thought of the faithful in Chiclayo, the coastal city in northern Peru where Prevost served as bishop, and the joy his old flock must feel at his ascent. I remembered the American priests, nuns, and lay brothers in Lima who educated my sisters and me and, a generation earlier, my mother. I recalled the open-air youth day Mass during Pope John Paul II's visit to Peru in 1985, when I was 13 years old; it was so hot that day that the authorities sprayed water on us with hoses, as we shouted, “¡Juan Pablo, amigo, el Perú esta contigo!” (That's “John Paul, friend, Peru is with you,” except it's better when it rhymes.)