The Bishop of the Diocese of London believes the new pope's message of listening to the voices of the people will resonate with Catholics in Canada.
Bishop Ronald Fabbro believes the new pope's background will help him understand our culture here and the challenges we're facing.
Robert Prevost, a Chicago-born missionary who spent his career ministering in Peru and took over the Vatican's powerful office of bishops, was elected the first pope from the United States in the history of the Catholic Church.
Prevost, a 69-year-old member of the Augustinian religious order, took the name Leo XIV.
In his first words as Pope Francis' successor, uttered from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, Leo said, "Peace be with you," and emphasized a message of peace, dialogue, and missionary evangelization.
Bishop Fabbro says a number of missions within the diocese resulted in several of their priests and sisters serving in Peru and interacting with Pope Leo during his work in Chiclayo.
While he's never met the new pope, Bishop Fabbro says he's communicated with him through letters.
He says the messages the pope gave in his short address are already connecting to a lot of people.
"Speaking of synodality, which is listening to the voices of our people, those things will resonate with a lot of our people here in Canada," he says.
Prevost had been a leading candidate for the papacy, but there had long been a taboo against a U.S. pope, given the country's geopolitical power already wielded in the secular sphere.
But Prevost was seemingly eligible because he's also a Peruvian citizen and lived for years in Peru, first as a missionary and then as an archbishop.
Waving flags from around the world, tens of thousands of people waited to learn who had won and were shocked when, an hour later, the senior cardinal deacon appeared on the loggia and said, "Habemus Papam!" and announced the winner was Prevost.
He spoke to the crowd in Italian and Spanish, but not English.
"Greetings ... to all of you, and in particular, to my beloved diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, where a faithful people have accompanied their bishop, shared their faith," he said in Spanish.
Bishop Fabbro says a new pope always brings a sense of energy and hope.
"Listening to the messages that he highlighted in his own address, he spoke about peace. So we can see being a messenger of peace in our world today is something that is uppermost in his mind and his papacy," he says.
The Diocese of London covers the counties of Middlesex, Elgin, Norfolk, Oxford, Perth, Huron, Lambton, Kent, and Essex.
According to the 2021 Census, there are 152,945 Catholics in Essex County (including Windsor).
With files from the Associated Press