The morning after John Prevost watched his younger brother Robert become Pope Leo XIV, he received a familiar phone call.

The new pope — who calls John every day — was well aware of the global interest in his selection as the first pontiff born in the United States. Journalists had descended on his family and friends, as well as many of the stops he’d made on his journey from a youth on the south side of Chicago to Peru and, eventually, the Vatican.

“Are the reporters gone?” a laughing John Prevost recalled the pope – “Rob” to him – ask. “I said no. ‘OK, goodbye.’”

The brother did clear up one question lingering in the minds of those in the pope’s hometown: Pope Leo roots for the White Sox, not the Cubs.

It’s a small window into an emerging portrait of the man who is the new leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. Friends and family members described him as a man who had chosen his path at a young age, and sacrificed to pursue it, but said he has also sought to stay in contact and follow through on commitments to those in Chicago, at his alma mater of Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where he started as a missionary in Peru, and more along the way.

They say they expect him to mirror the philosophy of his predecessor, Pope Francis — but to do so in his own image.

“He knew at such a young age that this is what he wanted. No one was going to talk him out of it,” John Prevost said.

John was reading a book in his living room Thursday when he got word there was white smoke coming out of the Sistine Chapel chimney — the traditional signal a new pontiff has been chosen. He turned the TV on and called his niece. Then, his brother stepped onto the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City.

“When I heard his name, she started screaming,” John said. “History was made.”

Still, he called his brother’s selection “bittersweet” because it means a family member who has spent most of his life far from home will be even harder to see.

Robert Prevost’s path toward priesthood began at an early age. He left home to attend a Catholic seminary high school in Michigan and only returned for summers and holidays.

Their eldest brother, Louis, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that as a child, Robert also insisted on playing priest. While his brothers groaned, the future pope would say Mass and then give communion by passing out Necco Wafers, he said.

“We kind of knew from the start, he’s going to go into the priesthood,” Louis said.

The whole neighborhood knew the altar boy would grow up to have a leading role in the Catholic church, said John, who also recalled his brother as a typical child, playing football and baseball with other children on their block and going to piano lessons.

“When we dropped him off for freshman year of high school, the drive home was very sad,” he said. “Now it’s even worse in the sense that — will we ever get to see him, unless we go over.”

Louis said he talks to Robert Prevost weekly — often catching him in the middle of watching soccer games. But he hadn’t yet connected with him since Thursday, when “Rob” became Pope Leo XIV. He said it brought tears of joy to his eyes to see his little brother become pope.

An American and a cardinal, but not an American cardinal

Before the cardinals gathered in Rome to choose the successor to Pope Francis, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, hadn’t thought much about Robert Prevost’s chances.

“I knew of him, but I thought – eh, one of the peripheral guys,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Friday.

But those who know him say that while Pope Leo might not have planned on becoming pope, his life’s work has set him up to lead. At the Vatican, he earned a reputation as a capable administrator — quiet, low-key and a good listener.

Robert Prevost was raised on the far south side of Chicago in the parish of St. Mary of the Assumption, educated at St. Augustine Seminary High School in Michigan, at Villanova University, an Augustinian college, and at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where he received a master of divinity in 1982 before later earning a doctor of canon law degree at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

But he spent much of his working life in Peru, where he was a missionary, leading the Augustinian seminary in Trujillo. He returned to Illinois in 1999 to lead the Order of Saint Augustine’s Midwestern province, and, starting in 2001, led the Augustinians globally — based in Rome, but traveling widely.

In 2014 he returned to Peru — where he became a naturalized citizen, receiving a Peruvian passport — and in 2015 was named bishop of Chiclayo.

The Diocese of Chiclayo celebrated his election and highlighted his dedication to social causes at a news conference Friday.

The diocese’s current bishop, Edinson Farfán, told journalists that Leo came to Peru “very young” and always had “a sensibility for the poor and the peripheries, and those who were not at the center of the church.”

Farfán also sought to draw a link between Leo’s time there and the name he chose, following the 13th pope who chose the name Leo and is widely regarded as the originator of modern Catholic social thought around issues like workers’ rights.

“Why did he choose Leo XIV as his name? Because you can say that Leo XIII was very sensitive of the social needs of society and how the church can help with that,” Farfán said in Spanish.

Fidel Purisaca, a priest who is friends with the pope and was a colleague in Chiclayo, said Leo visited all 50 parishes in the Diocese multiple times.

He was “very close to everyone” and that the priests’ house “had that spirit of family,” Purisaca said, calling Robert Prevost “an extraordinary bishop who lived an ordinary life and who was a great father, shepherd and friend, close to the heart of Christ and to others.”

In 2023, Prevost returned to the Vatican, where Francis had tapped him to lead the department that oversees the selection of new bishops. He was made a cardinal later that year.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the Archbishop of Newark in New Jersey, said that when Pope Leo was the leader of the Augustinian order, he would have spent half his time in Rome and “half of the year in other places.”

“If you’re privileged to work in another culture, other than the one you were raised in, you have to change,” Tobin said. “It’s … like a broadening experience.”

“And I think Bob has had – or Pope Leo – has had that,” Tobin said, inadvertently referring to the new pope by his former name. “He’s learned to think different ways.”

The pope, though, hasn’t exactly adapted to every local custom.

Mark O’Connor, a friar from Australia — where Prevost has traveled — told CNN he saw Leo recently and told him he’d brought a gift. Then-Cardinal Prevost responded that he hoped it wasn’t Vegemite. He was happy when the gift turned out to be a packet of TimTam chocolate biscuits.

The pontiff and the presidents

Prevost’s early days were spent in the same parts of Chicago that former President Barack Obama famously began his time as a community organizer. The pope’s childhood home and Obama’s first office were just miles away. The Catholic Theological Union, where Prevost completed his graduate studies, is close to the house the Obamas bought in 2005.

The two also could have crossed paths at Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox.

An Obama spokesman said they weren’t aware of a time the former president, also a White Sox fan, and the pope had met.

However, the pope does share a connection with former first lady Jill Biden: the two are Villanova University alumni. Their paths crossed there in 2014, where Biden, then the second lady, and Prevost each received honorary doctorates of humanities degrees.

Biden, who earned a master’s degree from Villanova in 1987, delivered the commencement address. The future pope sat behind Biden throughout her speech, laughing when she described herself as a “Philly girl.”

The two shook hands after her address and spent the ceremony seated near each other in the front row, with only the university’s president sitting between them.

As the first American pope, Leo is also the first with a voting record relevant to American elections. He has regularly voted in Illinois — participating in Republican primaries over the last 12 years and, before that, Democratic primaries.

And now, it’s the other American wielding massive global influence — President Donald Trump — whose comparisons to Pope Leo XIV might be most significant.

An X account in Robert Prevost’s name has, for the full decade since Trump launched his first presidential run in 2015, reposted multiple stories and posts critical of the president’s rhetoric and tactics on immigration. CNN has not been able to independently confirm the X account is connected to the newly elected pope.

Dolan said Prevost acting as a counter to Trump was not a significant factor in the conclave’s decision.

“I don’t think the fact that Cardinal Prevost was from the United States had much weight. It should not startle us that we would look to Pope Leo as a bridge builder. That’s what the Latin word ‘pontiff’ means,” Dolan said.

“Will he want to build bridges to Donald Trump? I suppose, but he would want to build bridges with the leader of every nation. So, I don’t think at all my brother cardinals would have thought of him as a counterweight to any one person,” he said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated there’s no bad blood between President Trump and Pope Leo, despite his potential connection to the critical social media posts.

“He is very proud to have an American pope,” Leavitt said at a news briefing Friday, responding to a question about the posts. “It’s a great thing for the United States of America and for the world, and we are praying for him.”

CNN
 — 

Several of the key voter groups that provided President Donald Trump’s most important electoral gains in November are recoiling from him as his term moves past the 100-day mark. But it remains unclear how much Democrats can benefit from these growing doubts.

In 2024, Trump improved his performance among some big voting blocs that have historically favored Democrats, including Latinos, younger men, non-White voters without a college degree, and, to some extent, Black men. Trump’s advances generated exuberant predictions from an array of right-leaning analysts that he had achieved a lasting realignment and cemented the GOP’s hold on voters of all races without a college degree.

But the flurry of polls 100 days into Trump’s second term suggests that cement has not hardened as much as some allies anticipated. Across multiple surveys, Trump’s overall job approval rating has fallen below his 2024 vote share with these key groups, and they are consistently giving him even lower marks for his handling of the economy, particularly inflation.

“The collapse that he’s experiencing — I think that’s the right word to phrase it — is broad-based and it’s deep,” said Mike Madrid, an expert on Latino voters and a longtime Republican consultant who has become a leading Trump critic in the party.

Few strategists in either party believe the cooling toward Trump means Democrats have erased their long-term problems with these voter groups, which have generally drifted toward the GOP since the end of Barack Obama’s presidency. But the rapid erosion of Trump’s standing with them does suggest that their movement toward him in 2024 was driven less by a durable rightward shift on cultural issues than by immediate discontent with their economic situation. And that means that rather than solidifying as part of the GOP coalition, many of these voters likely will remain up for grabs if Trump can’t improve their finances any more than President Joe Biden did.

“What we don’t see is an across-the-board realignment all up and down behind Trump’s agenda,” said Robert P. Jones, president and founder of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, which recently completed a large-scale survey of Americans’ attitudes on cultural issues.

Shadows of a realignment in 2024

Whether measured by Election Day surveys or precinct-level results, Trump’s improvement among voter groups that had not traditionally supported the GOP was arguably the biggest factor in his return to the White House.

Both the exit polls conducted by Edison Research for a consortium of media organizations including CNN and the AP VoteCast survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago found that Trump’s vote among White people was virtually identical from 2020 to 2024 and improved just modestly among voters older than 30.

But all data sources agreed that Trump made significant gains among groups that had been pillars of what was once called the “Obama coalition” and what I termed in 2008 “the coalition of the ascendant.”

The exit polls and VoteCast studies, for instance, both found that Trump in 2024 won around 45% of voters younger than 30, up from 36% in 2020. Both showed he gained much more among young men than among young women.

Likewise, both sources showed Trump crossing 40% support among Latinos, a modern high for the GOP, up from about one-third in 2020. The VoteCast study also found Trump doubling his vote among Black men to about 1 in 4. (The exit poll did not find meaningful improvement for him with them.)

The most attention after the election focused on Trump’s improvement among minority voters without a four-year college degree. The exit polls and AP VoteCast agreed that Trump carried almost exactly one-third of them, a big improvement over the roughly one-fourth of their votes he carried in 2020.

Since Trump’s first term, a growing number of center-right analysts in both parties have argued that Democrats were alienating working-class non-White voters by emphasizing culturally liberal and “woke” positions on issues such as transgender rights or the use of “Latinx” to describe Latinos. Many of these voices took Trump’s 2024 gains as proof that non-White voters without a college degree were now realigning away from Democrats toward the GOP, primarily around cultural issues, just as non-college-educated White voters did during the 1960s and 1970s.

“The Democrats really are no longer the party of the common man and woman,” Ruy Teixeira, a longtime Democratic analyst who has become a leading critic of the party, wrote immediately after the election. “This election has made this problem manifest in the starkest possible terms, as the Democratic coalition shattered into pieces.”

Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, author of “Party of the People,” a book that perceptively analyzes the GOP’s growing strength among working-class minorities, summarized the results even more succinctly: “No word for it but … realignment,” he wrote on social media few weeks after the vote.

Just over 100 days into Trump’s second term, the picture, at the least, looks much more fluid.

The swarm of national polls marking Trump’s 100 days shows his job approval rating among young people, Latinos and Black Americans falling below — often well below — his 2024 vote shares. His ratings on the economy with those groups are even weaker. And while Trump still receives decent grades from Hispanic and young people for his handling of the border, ratings of his overall approach to immigration have consistently fallen into negative territory with them as well.

Trump’s position has equally eroded among the group whose shift toward him last year attracted the most attention: the large number of minority Americans without a four-year college degree. His approval rating among those blue-collar racial minorities stands at just 29% in the latest CNN/SRSS poll, according to results provided by the CNN polling unit. (The latest New York Times/Siena, Pew Research Center and Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos surveys produced nearly identical results among that group.)

Just 27% of non-college-educated people of color approved of Trump’s economic performance in the CNN survey, and two-thirds of them thought he was “going too far” in his deportation agenda. Nearly 3 in 4 of them in the Washington Post survey said Trump does not respect the rule of law, and just 1 in 6 in the New York Times/Siena poll agreed with his assertion that he should be allowed to send US citizens to a prison in El Salvador.

Coming so soon in 2025, this broad dissatisfaction is casting a retrospective shadow over what happened in 2024. Madrid says the recoil from Trump, particularly among Latinos, makes clear that the movement toward him in 2024 was based mostly on economic factors rather than affinity for his cultural and racial views. “This is just another brick in the wall of the argument that this (Latino voter) is an economic voter,” Madrid said.

Jones similarly thinks the quick distancing from Trump strengthens the argument that his 2024 gains among minority and younger voters were driven more by the economy than by a cultural realignment. In PRRI’s recent national survey, Hispanic, Black and Gen Z adults were all much less likely than Trump’s core constituency of White voters without a four-year college degree to agree with foundational MAGA beliefs, such as that Whites and Christians are the real victims of discrimination or that “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.”

“There’s a real danger that Trump is overreaching on the cultural issues,” Jones said.

Republican former Rep. Carlos Curbelo likewise believes Trump may be pushing his Latino supporters too far with the sweep of his deportation agenda, especially while they remain stressed about the economy. “Democrats were wrong to believe that Hispanic voters would never prioritize border security and the deportation of the undocumented,” Curbelo wrote in an email. “(But) the current Administration is wrong if they think Hispanic voters will perform like MAGA base voters on immigration enforcement matters.”

Ray Serrano, national director of research and policy at LULAC, a Hispanic advocacy organization, sees Trump’s decline in terms that are even more absolute. “If there was a flirtation with possibly moving to the Trump side, to the Republican side, it’s moving away now,” Serrano said during a recent conference call that Latino advocacy groups held to release a national survey from a bipartisan polling team about Trump’s first 100 days. The disappointed response to Trump’s return, he argued, could signal “the rise and immediate fall of the Trump Latino Democrat.”

It may be as premature, though, to dismiss Trump’s inroads among these traditionally Democratic groups as it was to declare them proof of a durable realignment. All the 100-days surveys provide evidence that many of these voters, though disappointed in Trump’s first days, have not shut the door on him.

Republican pollster Daron Shaw, for instance, said the survey conducted for Latino advocacy groups by a bipartisan polling team found that both Trump’s job approval and support for some of his most controversial initiatives, such as deporting people without hearings or ending diversity initiatives, remained much stronger among men younger than 40 than any other group of Latinos.

And, as Jones pointed out, some of Trump’s conservative cultural views continue to resonate with minority voters, especially men. Big majorities of Latino men and women and Black men, for instance, agreed in the PRRI poll that transgender people should be required to use the bathroom of their gender at birth; a substantial minority of each group also agreed with the conservative perspective that society is better off when men and women accept traditional gender roles.

Even on the economy, the polls show some room for Trump, with many of his new voters saying it is too soon to render a verdict on his impact. The latest CNN poll was typical: Half of minority adults without college degrees said Trump has done nothing to address the nation’s problems, compared with only about 1 in 5 who said his agenda was already helping. But slightly more than another 1 in 4 of them said his agenda could generate benefits in time. That suggests he could recover among blue-collar non-White voters if they see progress on their biggest concerns, principally inflation.

John Della Volpe, who directs the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics’ youth poll, agreed that Trump’s attraction for younger voters has been frayed, not severed. “A lot of the newer Trump voters could say they disapprove of him, and they are unsure of his policies, but they are telling me they are giving him some time,” said Della Volpe, who also advised a super PAC in 2024 that tried to rally young voters for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Della Volpe says younger voters’ uncertainty about Trump hasn’t erased their doubts about Democrats. Though the Harvard survey has recorded sharp declines in support for Trump’s economic management just since January, Della Volpe said, “it doesn’t mean Democrats at this stage are a viable alternative.”

Madrid likewise thinks it would be a mistake for Democrats to assume the discontent with Trump has solved their own problems with Latinos and other blue-collar minority voters. He correctly notes that Democrats’ performance among Latinos rebounded in the 2018 midterm elections relative to 2016, only to resume their decline in the 2020 presidential election and continue downward in 2024.

The party could likewise run better among Latinos in 2026 than in 2024, Madrid says, solely because the less frequent, often younger, Latino voters most drawn to Trump tend not to turn out as much in midterm elections. But unless Democrats develop a more convincing economic message, he says, those less-reliable voters could easily prefer the GOP again when they return in larger numbers in 2028. “The lesson that Democrats failed to learn in 2018 could come back and haunt them in this election cycle: Winning just by being against something does not cement or build the coalition,” Madrid said.

Trump so far has clearly failed to consolidate, much less extend, the beachhead he established last year with younger and non-White voters. His sweeping tariffs, by raising their daily costs, seem likely to weaken his position with them.

But in the battle for these voters’ long-term allegiance, Democrats would be dangerously complacent to conclude the tide has already turned. Young people and blue-collar minorities, especially the men in each group, now look less like reliable voters for either party than a volatile swing constituency that could tip future presidential contests based on which side they believe can best deliver for their bottom line.

Rome
CNN
 — 

Pope Leo XIV stepped out onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to thunderous applause and an electric atmosphere, to deliver his first Sunday blessing and an address calling for peace in Ukraine and Gaza.

The last time he stood on the same velvet-draped ledge, the fragrant scent of white smoke was still hanging in the air and looks of shock permeated the crowd. Just days ago, the election of a US-born pope seemed almost impossible.

But those gathered in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday knew exactly what to expect – a pontiff who was born in Chicago, shaped in Peru and well-experienced in Vatican leadership.

“Let us take up the invitation that Pope Francis left us in his Message for today: the invitation to welcome and accompany young people,” Leo said Sunday from the balcony, speaking in fluent Italian. “And let us ask our heavenly Father to assist us in living in service to one another.”

“In today’s dramatic scenario of a third world war being fought piecemeal, as Pope Francis said, I too turn to the world’s leaders with an ever timely appeal: never again war!,” he said.

Pope Leo called for peace in Ukraine, as well as a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages. He also called for humanitarian aid to be provided “to the exhausted population” in Gaza.

“I welcomed the announcement of the ceasefire between India and Pakistan and I hope that through negotiations we can reach a lasting agreement,” he added.

He delivered a “message of peace” and led the faithful crowd in the Regina Caeli (“Queen of Heaven”) prayer for the first time, surprising those gathered by singing part of the prayer.

The prayer is one of four Marian antiphons, or prayers to the Virgin Mary, which is said throughout the Easter season.

The city of Rome said 150,000 people were expected to gather in St. Peter’s Square for the prayer and significant law enforcement resources are deployed, but an official estimate of the crowd has yet to be announced.

The square was booming with music ahead of Leo’s address, as hundreds of musicians from around the world marched into St. Peter’s Square for a Jubilee of Bands, playing classic songs from their home countries and even pop songs like Village People’s 1978 hit “YMCA.”

As he finished his address, loud shouts of “viva il papa,” or “long live the pope,” were heard among the tens of thousands of people.

Pope Leo is indicated on Saturday that his papacy will follow closely in the footsteps of the late Pope Francis, setting out a vision for a church led be a missionary focus, courageous dialogue with the contemporary world and “loving care for the least and the rejected.”

Leo is expected to lean in a more progressive way on social issues like migration and poverty but fall more in line with moderates on moral issues of Catholic doctrine.

In his first meeting with cardinals on Saturday, the new pontiff said that he chose his papal name to continue down the path of Pope Leo XIII, who addressed “the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.” Leo XIII, who was pope from 1878 to 1903, had a strong emphasis on workers’ rights and Catholic social doctrine.

Leo XIV also used his first weekend as pontiff to visit the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, where he prayed at the tomb of Francis.

He also traveled to an Augustinian sanctuary just outside Rome, the Madonna del Buon Consiglio (Mother of Good Counsel), in Genazzano, Italy.

Leo is the first pontiff from the Augustinian order, which places an emphasis on service work and building community. He spent more than a decade leading the Augustinians as the prior general, giving him experience of heading an order spread across the world.

Even larger crowds are expected to fill St. Peter’s Square during Pope Leo’s installation Mass, which will take place on Sunday, May 18.

CNN’s Sharon Braithwaite and Christopher Lamb contributed to this report.