BUFFALO, N.Y. — Two Buffalo area priests who watched the announcement that Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, O.S.A., a Chicago native, was elected as the 267th pope, taking the name Pope Leo XIV, were stunned and delighted that an American will lead the Roman Catholic Church for the first time in history.
“To me, its the same feeling the people in Poland must had had when John Paul II was named … or with Pope Francis and the excitement South Americans felt,” said Monsignor David LiPuma of Our Lady of Victory Basilica in Lackawanna.
“I’m just excited it’s an American and it’s going to be wonderful to see what he does and how he changes the church and the church in the United States and I’m just moved,” he said…