ROME — The new Chicago-raised Pope Leo XIV faces an immediate challenge in his native country: taming the brawling U.S. tribe of Catholics, riven by political divisions that have thwarted the will of his predecessors.

The still-open wounds from decades of clerical sexual abuse, along with the growing power of far-right Catholics in Trump’s Washington, will shape relations between Robert Prevost’s Vatican and his ho

From Washington to Rome, leaders around the globe responded to the surprise election of American Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as the next head of the Catholic Church.