On the corner table, a chessboard, six champagne flutes and a corked up bottle of Prosecco. A few feet over, a sound bar and a flat screen television. And on it a live feed from Rome.
Seated around this well-lit den Thursday afternoon in the rectory of Chattanooga’s Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul, priests and friends gabbed, munched on takeout from Shangri-la, fiddled with phones, reclined in couches and waited — expectantly.
In mere moments, the new pope would say his first words.
“He’s an American from Chicago, Augustine religious order — like a Benedictine sort of thing,” said the Rev. David Carter, speaking fast in the lead-up, sporting, like some others in the room, the priestly black cassock and white collar. “He served most of his priesthood in Peru as a missionary. And was actually a bishop in Peru as an American.
“He’s gonna bridge the gap,” Carter added. “He’s gonna have the worldview of an American and the worldview of a Latin American. What a — it seems inspired.”
On the television screen, the crowd roar rose up and then ebbed.
“Leo XIV was the name he took,” Carter said.
The crowd kept buzzing. The rectory ceiling fan twirled in circles. Someone asked who Leo XIII was. Carter began to answer, then —
“First words, first words!” said the Rev. Alex Hernandez.
Pope Leo XIV’s first words were in Italian. Peace be with all of you, he proclaimed. The Chattanooga rectory approved.
“That’s a good way to start,” Carter said. “That’s a good way to start.”
The brief speech hit wide-ranging themes — unconditional love, how evil will not prevail, the need to move forward in unity bathed in the light of Christ, the need to build bridges to all, to be one people in peace, to be missionaries, to be welcoming.
“He’s hitting all the right points,” Carter said, before the new pope quoted Augustine and pivoted to Spanish, addressing old friends and parishioners back in the diocese of Chiclayo in Peru. “Lil’ shout-out to his former diocese!” Carter said.
A vertical panning shot of the chapel showed the cardinals — who had just voted the new pope in — bunched cinematically in the windows on either side of Leo XIV, peering out to hear and see him and the crowd in St Peter’s Square below. Tyler Ross, a canon lawyer for the diocese of Knoxville who’d come from his nearby office for the occasion, saluted the aesthetic power of drone-cams.
Then came the Hail Mary. The pope said it. The rectory said it along with him, in Italian. Then the pope switched up languages once more.
“His Latin’s good, too,” Ross said.
“His Italian is good, his Spanish is good, his Latin is good,” Carter said, laughing. “And you know his American’s good!”
“When,” someone asked, “is he gonna speak ‘merican?”
The speech resolved — not a word of ‘merican spoken — and before long, news releases were pouring from press offices around the world.
One linked to a video from Knoxville. It showed the Bishop Mark Beckman, bells of the diocese’s cathedral tolling being him, telling the camera operator what was on his mind.
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He was thinking about the most recent Pope Leo — XIII — who, he recalled, wrote on the Catholic Church’s social teachings more than a century ago. As for the new Pope Leo — XIV — the bishop met him in bishop school last year, when Leo XIV was just a man known as the Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost.
Finally, Beckman noted the new pope’s message for peace — an echo, he noted, of the words of the risen Christ — and said an American pope was something to be proud of.
Back in the rectory, this American-ness was also a theme of interest. The Rev. Michael Hendershott read an article aloud from his phone, noting that Prevost’s lengthy missionary service allowed him to be seen as a more universal candidate than as an American, thus mitigating problems that may have hampered the selection of a pope from a global superpower.
The TV, now emitting what seemed to be gentle Gregorian music, panned over the Vatican City crowd.
“My phone is blowing up,” Carter said.
Marina Delaney, who works at the basilica, jokingly imagined the messages: “What do you think father?! What do you think?”
“It’s all positive!” Carter said. A moment’s pause. Then he looked around.
“Well. Now it’s time!,” he said, leaping up and heading for the Prosecco.
There were concerns Carter would bust the ceiling or splatter the drink. But the pop went off without incident.
“Aaaay,” they all said.
“Cheers to Pope Leo XIV,” Carter said. “The first American pope. And the second Latin American one?”
Glasses clinked. Bottoms up. The ethereal music played on, conveying a subdued, after-party energy.
“I’m frankly shocked that they picked an American,” Ross said. “Given our country.”
“I think that what you’re going to find is that he is the thing that he says he wants to do,” Carter said. “He wants to be a bridge builder. He is the bridge between the United States, South America and Rome.”
“He’s like the Paul Atreides of the Catholic Church,” Ross said.
Contact Andrew Schwartz at aschwartz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.
Note: This story was updated May 9 to correct the name of the pope’s former diocese in Peru.