Just hours after being elected the Catholic Church’s 267th pontiff, Pope Leo XIV has three appointments on his agenda: a Mass with cardinals, praying the Regina Caeli, and greeting journalists and media who covered the conclave.
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According to Vatican News, Leo XIV will celebrate a Mass at 11:00 a.m. Rome time with the College of Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel.
Then he will lead his first Regina Caeli, a Marian prayer recited especially during the Easter season, at Roman noon on Sunday.
Rather than leading the prayer from a window of the Apostolic Palace, as popes have customarily done on Sundays for the Angelus or Regina Caeli, he is scheduled to appear again at the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, as he did after the “Habemus papam” announcement on May 8.
On the following morning, the new pope will greet the journalists and media professionals who have been in Rome to cover the funeral of Pope Francis, the sede vacante, and the conclave.
After his election on May 8, the 69-year-old pope returned to the building where he has been living in Rome, the Palazzo Sant’Uffizio, a Vatican building housing the offices of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the apartments of some Vatican officials.
Photos shared on X by Xaviere Sr. Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, show Leo XIV greeting Becquart and taking a “selfie” with her and others during his surprise visit to the Palazzo Sant’Uffizio after he was announced as pope.
This article was originally published on CNA.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.
