Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural Mass will begin at 3 a.m. Sunday morning Chicago time (10 a.m. in Italy) in St. Peter’s Basilica and Square in the Vatican in Rome.
The first American pope — who was born in Chicago as Robert Prevost — was elected as the 267th pontiff on May 8.
Many friends and colleagues from Prevost’s time in Chicago and elsewhere will be on hand for his installation.
Leaders from around the globe will be in attendance. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are scheduled to attend. Others planning to be in Rome are Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Britain’s Prince Edward, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Polish President Andrzej Duda and Dina Boluarte, the president of Peru, where Prevost served for two decades, including as bishop.
Watch live here:
Leo, 69, will start the day by taking his first tour through the piazza in the popemobile. The open-topped vehicle has become synonymous with the papacy’s global reach, used at home and abroad to bring popes close to their flock.
After the festive public tour in the square, Leo goes into the basilica to begin the solemn ceremony to inaugurate his ministry in a series of rites that emphasize the service that he’s called to offer to lead the Catholic Church. He prays first at the tomb of St. Peter, considered to be the first pope, under the basilica’s main altar and then proceeds out to St. Peter’s Square for the Mass.
During the Mass, Leo will receive the two potent symbols of the papacy: the lambswool stole, known as a pallium, and the fisherman’s ring. The pallium, draped across his shoulders, symbolizes the pastor carrying his flock as the pope carries the faithful. The ring, which becomes Leo’s official seal, symbolizes Jesus’ call to the apostle Peter to cast his fishing nets.
The other symbolically important moment of the Mass is the representational rite of obedience to Leo: Whereas in the past all cardinals would vow obedience to the new pope, more recent papal installations involve representatives of cardinals, bishops, priests, deacons, nuns, married couples and young people participating in the rite.
In the days since his historic election, Leo has already sketched out some of his key priorities as pope, emphasizing a message of peace, so it’s not known if he’ll use his installation homily as a mission statement as some of his predecessors did.
Leo has vowed all efforts to find peaceful ends to the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere. But as a priority, he has also identified the challenges to humanity posed by artificial intelligence, making the parallel to the challenges to human dignity posed by the industrial revolution that were confronted by his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who was pope from 1878 to 1903.
After the homily and at the end of the Mass, Leo will offer a final blessing and then go into the basilica to greet the heads of the more than 150 official delegations attending.
Since he was elected pontiff, there has been a spotlight on the pope’s south suburban hometown of Dolton, his boyhood home and the church his family attended. The Catholic Theological Union on the South Side of Chicago — where the pope studied — has also been brought into the limelight, and several CTU officials and alums will be in attendance Sunday.