Pope Leo XIV has weighed in on US politics not from St. Peter's Square, but from the ballot box. The Illinois-registered voter, born Robert Francis Prevost, requested a mail-in ballot be sent to his residence in Vatican City for next week's midterms, the Will County clerk's office confirmed to NBC News on Thursday. The ballot was requested on Oct. 3. On Friday, the Vatican confirmed that the pope had submitted the ballot, reports the AP. Leo "has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen," the Vatican press office said. "The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes."
Records show that Leo voted in Democratic primaries in 2008 and 2010, when he was registered in heavily Democratic Cook County, and GOP primaries in 2012, 2014, and 2016, when he was registered in GOP-leaning Will County. He did not vote in the state's primaries this year, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Records also show that he has voted in every general election since 2000, apart from 2022 and 2024. Leo—chosen as the first American pope in May 2025—is the first pontiff to cast a ballot in a US election. The AP reports that it's not clear how the ballot was returned, but the pope's older brother, John Prevost, was in Rome this week, accompanying parishioners from New Lenox, Illinois parish St. Jude's.
A frequent critic of President Trump's foreign and immigration policies, Leo said earlier this year that he is "not afraid of the Trump administration, or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what the Church works for." Trump has slammed the pope as "weak" on crime and "terrible" on foreign policy, while Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, has warned that Leo "should be careful when he talks about matters of theology."
- This story has been updated with new developments.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
