God made me the Catholic leader to illuminate the world …- Theconclaveng

Pope Leo XIV, Friday 9 May 2025, prayed that his historical papacy could help the Catholic Church to be a lighthouse that illuminates the “dark nights of this world”.

Leo prayed as he celebrated his first mass in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, where he had been elected less than 24 hours earlier.

Leo, the former cardinal Robert Prevost and the first Pope of the United States, seemed serene while he said the mass in the famous chapel frescoed with the same cardinals who chose him as the 267th Pontiff and the successor of Pope Francis.

Dressed with relatively simple white and gold vestments, Leo, who was born in Chicago but spent two decades as a missionary in Peru, said some words in English before continuing his homily in Italian fluent.

He painted the spiritual picture of the Church that he would like to see under his papacy.

Pope Leo said: “God entrusted me to me this treasure so that, with his help, I could be his faithful administrator for the good of the entire mystical body of the Church.

“She did so that she can be more and more fully a city on a hill, an ark of salvation that navigates through the waters of history and a lighthouse that illuminates the dark nights of this world.”

Leo added that the church of 1.4 billion members was great not for “the magnificence of its structures or the grandeur of its building, but rather through the holiness of its members”.

Leo, at the age of 69, was elected at the end of a quick two -day conclave which was wrapped on Thursday evening when the white smoke was floated by the fireplace on the chapel.

Before his elections, the US cardinals had been largely canceled as papal contenders due to a widespread assumption that the global church could not be managed by a pope of superpower, according to Reuters reported.

However, it also holds Peruvian citizenship, which means that it has a profound knowledge of both western and less developed nations.

After the mass, Leo will have lunch with the cardinals who have elected him, and will therefore be free to leave the Vatican and return to their homes all over the world.