ope Leo XIV appears on the central loggia of St. Peter's Basilica after being chosen the 267th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, at the Vatican, Thursday, May 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV, the American Robert Prevost, said “Peace be with you” in his first words as pope, offering a message of peace and dialogue “without fear.”

From the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, history’s first American pope recalled he was an Augustinian priest, but that he was above all a Christian above all and a bishop, “So we can all walk together.”

He spoke in Italian and then switched to Spanish, recalling his many years spent as a missionary and then archbishop of Chiclayo, Peru.

Prevost, a missionary who spent his career ministering in Peru and leads the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops, was elected the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.

Prevost, a 69-year-old member of the Augustinian religious order, took the name Leo XIV. He appeared on the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica wearing the traditional red cape of the papacy — a cape that Pope Francis had eschewed on his election in 2013.