Throughout the service, Cardinal Giovanni Re, the 91-year-old Dean of the College of Cardinals, has been standing close to Pope Leo XIV. He has just spoken some of the eucharistic prayers and he and Leo embraced each other during the sign of peace.

Being over the age of 80, Cardinal Re was unable to participate in the conclave, but still made his influence felt.

In the Holy Mass before the conclave, Re delivered its central homily, making what seemed to be a Franciscan call to cherish “diversity.”

Speaking Thursday, Re said he hoped that a new pope would be chosen by that evening. Within hours, white smoke rose from the Sistine Chapel.

One of the things cardinals – and Catholics around the world – will be watching closely is how Pope Leo carries himself in these early days.

According to Father Patrick Mary Briscoe, something “remarkable happens when a man is elected pope.”

“There’s a kind of change that happens immediately,” he told CNN. “He begins to carry himself with office.”

Briscoe recalled how the same was said of Pope Francis – and how Pope Leo XIV will be “looking to continue to grow the church and to unite the church in what is a very contentious and difficult moment in history.”

“One of the great titles of the pope is that he’s the builder of bridges,” he said.

Briscoe added that the task ahead is challenging, but that Pope Leo’s first steps suggest a man ready to lead with unity, and a real desire to engage with the world.

As cross-bearers entered the Sistine Chapel for Pope Leo’s first Mass as the new pontiff, the double chimney used to burn the conclave ballots was visible behind them.

It’s the same chimney that the white smoke billowed out of moments after his election on Thursday – just 17 hours ago.

When voting in the conclave, cardinals write their preferred candidates’ name on a secret ballot. Those ballots are then mixed up in an urn to ensure secrecy, and then burned in the chimneys to create the iconic smoke.

We’re now approaching the central part of this morning’s Mass: the Eucharist, where the Holy Communion – the bread and the wine – are consecrated.

Catholics believe that the consecrated bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ.

“Pray, brothers, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father,” said Pope Leo XIV.

Concluding his homily, Pope Leo XIV urged the priesthood to make itself “small” so as not to obscure the glory of Christ.

Leo quoted Saint Ignatius, who said he will “truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world no longer sees my body.”

“Ignatius was speaking about being devoured by wild beasts in the arena – and so it happened – but his words apply more generally to an indispensable commitment for all those in the Church who exercise a ministry of authority,” Leo said.

Pope Leo XIV said the Catholic Church must press ahead with its “missionary outreach” in the far corners of the globe, a call reminiscent of the priorities of his predecessor, Pope Francis.

“These are contexts where it is not easy to preach the Gospel and bear witness to its truth, where believers are mocked, opposed, despised or at best tolerated and pitied. Yet, precisely for this reason, they are the places where our missionary outreach is desperately needed,” Leo said.

“A lack of faith is often tragically accompanied by the loss of meaning in life, the neglect of mercy, appalling violations of human dignity, the crisis of the family and so many other wounds that afflict our society,” he said.

During his papacy, the late Pope Francis stressed his commitment to the “peripheries” of the globe, visiting many countries never before visited by a pope. Leo himself spent many years serving the church in Peru.

First homilies are often used by popes to set out their priorities. Leo’s homily is seeming to show his commitment to following a Franciscan path.

In a homily that has been dense with scripture, Pope Leo XIV has now began to use simpler language, and has sworn to be a “faithful administrator” of the Catholic church.

“In a particular way, God has called me by your election to succeed the Prince of the Apostles, and has entrusted this treasure to me,” he said.

Pope Leo XIV is now delivering the homily, one of the central parts of the Catholic Mass.

Leo began his homily in his native English, inviting the congregation of cardinals to “recognize the marvels that the Lord has done.”

Speaking now in Italian, Leo continued with a quote from Peter, the first Catholic saint, in the Book of Matthew.

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Leo said.

“In these words, Peter, asked by the Master, together with the other disciples, about his faith in him, expressed the patrimony that the Church, through the apostolic succession, has preserved, deepened and handed on for two thousand years.”

In a moment full of symbolism, Pope Leo XIV made a striking choice at his first Mass as pontiff – not through words, but through the altar.

Rather than using the grand, traditional altar in the Sistine Chapel – one that would have placed his back to the cardinals – it appears he opted to set up an altar facing them directly.

“He has clearly decided that he will be facing the cardinals, I think that’s significant,” said CNN’s Vatican Correspondent Christopher Lamb. “His decision now has sent a statement.”

“There are some Catholics who want the liturgy to go back, they want some of the old ways of saying the liturgy.”

Father Patrick Mary Briscoe believes the moment was intentional.

“I’m certain that it was his choice,” he said. “There’s no way that he’s celebrating this mass without having made that decision.”

“This is the way that most Catholics would experience the mass,” he added. “We have a pope that is praying with us in a way that is understood by all and appreciated by all.”

The second reading came from the First Epistle of St. Peter, which describes how Christians, “like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.”

The reading was given in Spanish – one of the several European languages spoken by Pope Leo XIV.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus famously tells Peter – the first Catholic saint – that he is the “rock upon which I will build my church.”

Peter’s letter is meant to provide solace to Christians facing persecution for their faith.

This morning’s Mass first reading is from the Book of Revelation, chapter 21, verses nine to 14. It is being delivered in English.

The passage describes the vision of the New Jerusalem: a city with God-like radiance, shining like “a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal,” whose walls bear the names of the twelve Apostles.

The passage was read by a Nun, which Father Patrick Mary Briscoe said was deliberate.

“The inclusion of a woman is something that Catholics in the US would certainly be comfortable and very familiar with,” he said. “But that’s not the case for the universal church.”

“We’re seeing a nod to and certainly a sign of respect for the role that women have in the church here,” he added.

CNN’s Vatican Correspondent Christopher Lamb said the issue of “how to give greater visibility to women in the church” is one of the “number one issues” for the Catholic Church.

“That is going to be important,” he said.

Most days, the Sistine Chapel is one of the world’s busiest tourist attractions. Yesterday, it was the world’s most secretive polling station. Today, it is restored to its central function: A place of worship.

Leo XIV is now presiding over the first Mass of his papacy.

The service will be conducted in multiple languages, including a reading from the First Epistle of St. Peter in Spanish, the language of Peru, where Cardinal Robert Prevost spent a decade before becoming Pope Leo XIV.

To start the Mass, the choir is singing an opening antiphon from Psalm 46 in the Catholic psalter.

China has congratulated Robert Francis Prevost on his selection as the new pope, expressing hopes for continued dialogue with the Vatican despite their tense and sensitive ties.

The ruling Communist Party of China, an officially atheist state with millions of Catholics, has had a difficult and complex relationship with the Vatican.

The Vatican has not had formal diplomatic relations with China since 1951, when the newly established communist regime broke ties and expelled the papal nuncio, the Holy See’s envoy.

Instead, the Vatican remains one of a dwindling number of countries – and the only one in Europe – that recognizes the sovereignty of Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims.

That diplomatic allegiance has remained a sore point for Beijing as it feuded with the Vatican for decades over who gets to appoint Catholic bishops in China.

Pope Francis had attempted to address the issue through a landmark – although controversial – deal with the Chinese government, as he pushed the Vatican closer to the Communist Party leadership than any of his predecessors.

Pope Leo XIV will celebrate Mass at the Sistine Chapel today, along with the cardinals who elected him, the Vatican said at a briefing yesterday.

At midday Sunday, he will also recite the Regina Coeli prayer at St. Peter’s Basilica — from the same balcony where he was revealed to the world.

Journalists will be able to have an audience with the new pope on Monday morning, the Vatican added.

“We share the joy for this moment,” Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said.

The newly chosen pontiff, now known as Pope Leo XIV, is the first pope from the United States, and the new leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Considered a highly capable and accomplished leader, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, the 69-year-old from Chicago, most recently headed the powerful Vatican office for new bishop appointments, the Dicastery for Bishops, assessing candidates and making recommendations to the late pope. Francis appointed Prevost to the position, indicating he saw the US cleric as an effective leader.

He also made him president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, where Prevost had spent much of his earlier career as a missionary.

The new pontiff is a member of the Augustinian religious order and spent more than a decade as its prior general, giving him experience of heading an order spread across the world.

He worked for a decade in Trujillo, Peru, and was later appointed bishop of Chiclayo, another Peruvian city, where he served from 2014 to 2023. In 2015, he also received Peruvian citizenship.

Prevost earned his bachelor’s in mathematics from Villanova University in Pennsylvania and went on receive his diploma in theology from the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago.

He was later sent to Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical Saint Thomas Aquinas University and was ordained as a priest in June 1982. Later in his career, he taught canon law in the seminary in Trujillo, Peru.

Now that Robert Prevost is Pope Leo XIV, he steps into a lot of responsibility and upcoming challenges as the new head of the Catholic Church.

First, the world is also watching to see whether he will follow in the path of Pope Francis.

Francis’ rejection of opulence and his softer tone on social issues was praised by some Western leaders, but there remains a faction in the church advocating for a stricter line on questions of sex, gender, marriage and migration.

He must also choose carefully when to intervene on the world stage. Francis became increasingly political in the final years of his papacy, making the case for the rights of migrants, urging a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and suggesting — to the ire of Kyiv — that Ukraine should wave “the white flag” and make concessions to end Russia’s war in the country.

These ongoing conflicts, and the rise of populism and authoritarianism around the world, set a complicated context in which the new pope — himself an important figure in global diplomacy — will operate.

And how Leo will handle the clerical sex abuse scandals that have long plagued the Church could also define his papacy. Though Francis spoke defensively about his record on the matter, and took some important steps to tackle systemic issues involving abuse, the previous pope was accused by survivors’ groups of failing to hold accountable bishops and cardinals accused of covering up abuse.

Robert Francis Prevost, who on Thursday became the first American elected Pope, has Creole of color roots in New Orleans, Louisiana, his brother confirmed to the New York Times.

John Prevost, the new Pope’s older brother, confirmed to the Times research done by Jari C. Honora, a family historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection. CNN reached out to John Prevost for comment.

Records shared with CNN by Honora show the family of Prevost’s mother, Mildred Martinez Prevost, lived in New Orleans before they migrated to Chicago, where Mildred was born in 1912.

Honora also shared a marriage certificate for Mildred’s parents and a photo of a family grave site that shows her parents’ name.

Creole ancestry includes people of mixed Spanish or French and Black descent.

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Six weeks before American Cardinal Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV, the activist group Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) filed a complaint against him, along with other church leaders, to the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

The group alleged Prevost “harmed the vulnerable and caused scandal” by mishandling two situations – in Chicago in 2000, and in Peru in 2022 – involving priests accused of sexual abuse.

The group said that as provincial supervisor in Chicago for the Augustinian order in 2000, Prevost allowed a priest accused of abusing at least 13 minors to live at the Augustinian order’s St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park, half a block from St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School. The priest, Father James Ray, had been barred since 1991 from performing parish work or being alone with minors – restrictions the Archdiocese of Chicago noted when it asked Prevost to allow Ray to live at the friary, the complaint said.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Prevost served as a parish pastor and diocesan official in Peru. He returned there in 2015, when Pope Francis appointed him as Bishop of the diocese of Chiclayo, Peru. In 2022, three women filed a complaint to Prevost accusing two priests there of sexual abuse beginning in 2007, when they were minors, as reported by The Pillar, a Catholic investigative journalism project.

The women filed civil complaints, saying the diocese had failed to act or inform civil authorities about their allegations. But prosecutors closed the case a month later, saying the statute of limitations had expired, according to SNAP’s complaint.

The diocese denied the women’s allegations, saying that Prevost met with them personally when they filed their initial complaint. The diocese said it suspended one priest after the complaint, and that the other was no longer in ministry because of his age and poor health. It also said it forwarded their complaint to higher-ups in Rome, to an office known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. But the dicastery closed that case in 2023.

SNAP’s complaint alleges that Prevost, as bishop, failed to open an investigation, properly inform civil prosecutors, or restrict the priests involved. The women also said church investigators never talked to them, SNAP’s Pearson told CNN.

Prevost’s successor as Bishop of Chiclayo, Guillermo Cornejo, reopened the case in 2023 and called for a new investigation, after one of the three women went public with her accusations, as reported by The Pillar.

Rodolfo Soriano Nuñez, a sociologist in Mexico City who has written extensively about the Roman Catholic church and its handling of clerical sexual abuse, said that Prevost was one of the few bishops in Peru who tried to address sexual abuse by priests, setting up a commission to deal with such cases.

While he served as Bishop of Chiclayo, Prevost told newspaper La Republica in 2019 that, “We reject cover-ups and secrecy” about sexual abuse cases. He urged people to come forward if they’re aware of abuse against minors by a priest.

The newly elected American pope, Robert Prevost, appears to have previously reposted social media posts critical of Vice President JD Vance and the immigration policies of President Donald Trump — views that were in line with his predecessor and could cause friction with the White House.

An X account listed under Prevost’s name did not appear to personally write any of the critical posts, but reposted articles and headlines from others. CNN has not been able to independently confirm the X account is connected to the newly elected Pope Leo XIV.

The posts took aim at past comments from Vance accusing the far left of caring more for migrants than American citizens, as well as the Trump administration’s wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who was residing in Maryland before he was sent to a Salvadoran prison.

The latter was the subject of the most recent critical repost. On April 14, the account reposted an article regarding Abrego Garcia and a piece written by Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar of Washington, DC.

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