By Independent News Roundup
Update (1318ET): American cardinal Robert Prevost - a fierce opponent of same-sex marriage and gender studies in classrooms, yet past Trump & Vance critic - has been selected as the new pope, and will be named Leone XIV, ending a two-day conclave in Rome.
The voting cardinals have made their way out to the balconies of St. Peter's Bascilica waiting for the new pope, as chants of "Leone, Leone, Leone" could be heard from the crowd.
Prevost (now Leone XIV), has previously expressed disappointment that some Western media held "sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the gospel," in particular, the "homosexual lifestyle" and "alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children," according to the NY Times.
Cardinal Prevost, appointed by Francis in 2023 to run the Vatican office that selects and manages bishops globally, has spent much of his life outside the United States. Ordained in 1982 at age 27, he received a doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. In Peru, he was a missionary, parish priest, teacher and bishop. As the Augustinians’ leader, he visited orders around the world, and speaks Spanish and Italian.
The cardinal understands that the center of the Roman Catholic Church “is not in the United States or the North Atlantic,” said Raúl E. Zegarra, assistant professor of Catholic theological studies at Harvard Divinity School.
Prevost also opposed a government plan in Peru to add gender studies instruction in classrooms, telling local media "The promotion of gender ideology is confusing, because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist."
THEN AGAIN, here's Prevost in February...
And in 2015...
Oh...
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