On the campus of Villanova College, college students watched the white smoke rise from the Sistine Chapel throughout a watch get together on Thursday, and had been surprised once they heard a well-recognized identify.
“As quickly as we heard ‘Prevost,’ everybody began cheering,” stated Isabella Quatela, a senior who’s graduating subsequent week, in a telephone interview.
A former scholar of the college, Robert Francis Prevost, had simply develop into the brand new pope.
Church bells rang out for hours on campus, and professors toasted with champagne. Congratulatory messages inundated Villanova’s president because the college celebrated its new most well-known alumnus.
Villanova, residence to about 10,000 undergraduate and graduate college students within the suburbs of Philadelphia, is the nation’s premier Catholic college of the Augustinian order. The order relies on the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo, and characterised by its dedication to neighborhood. Its ethos is fact, charity and unity.
Robert Prevost would go on to at some point lead the Augustinian order worldwide — and as of Thursday, your complete Catholic Church as Pope Leo XIV.
However within the Seventies, he was simply one other undergraduate strolling the Gothic campus. He studied arithmetic and philosophy, graduating with a math diploma in 1977.
He has maintained a protracted connection to the college, returning to campus once in a while and assembly with college students in Rome. He acquired an honorary physician of humanities from the college in 2014, and is a Villanova basketball fan.
“He has at all times been a really loyal Villanova alum,” the college president, the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, stated in a telephone interview, including that he lamented that he could have misplaced his probability to have the previous cardinal as a graduation speaker.
“I’m certain he’s going to be actually busy now,” he stated.
Father Donohue was busy himself on Thursday. He occurred to be in Chicago, the brand new pope’s hometown, for a Villanova alumni occasion. As soon as the information was introduced, scores of congratulatory texts and emails got here in, together with a be aware from the president of a rival Catholic college, Notre Dame.
He stated Pope Leo XIV would carry a humble, easy method to the papacy, one which he had exemplified as a cardinal. Although Cardinal Prevost lived in Vatican Metropolis, he would go over to the Augustinian neighborhood most days for prayers and meals, Father Donohue stated. “Group was crucial to him,” he stated.
Many individuals at Villanova on Thursday appeared to have some form of connection to the brand new pope. A few of Ms. Quatela’s pals had traveled to Rome and have photographs from a dinner with him. “They’re like, ‘I met the pope,’” she stated.
Anna Moreland, a humanities professor, as soon as had lunch with him on the College of Chicago. She was internet hosting a division assembly at a restaurant on Thursday when the information broke. They ordered champagne for the desk.
“It was simply actually thrilling,” she stated Thursday afternoon. “It’s actually thrilling to be on campus.”
Alan Blinder and Christopher Maag contributed reporting.
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