Clayton Powell knew the man next to him in Row 17 looked familiar. He just wasn’t sure enough to ask.
But a few hours before the American Airlines flight from Chicago arrived at Rome’s Fiumicino airport Saturday morning, a flight attendant approached his neighbor in the middle seat: “The pilots would like to talk to you when we land.”
The 27-year-old grad student’s suspicions were confirmed. He was sitting next to John Prevost, the sociable older brother of Pope Leo XIV, who’d become an overnight social media sensation for his candid comments with the press in the hours after his Wordle-playing, baseball-loving brother Robert was elected pope.
“He was on TV. I knew what he kind of looked like,” Powell told Angelus hours after arriving in Rome. “So when that happened I was like, ‘OK, yeah, there’s something here.’ ”
Powell mustered the courage to make his move.
“Hey, if I’m wrong, don’t worry about it,” Powell told him. “But like, are you the pope’s brother?’ ”
Yes, he was. And the two were making the trip with the same objective: to see the first American pope with their own eyes.
Their reasons were slightly different. Powell attends the University of Chicago on the city’s South Side (near Prevost’s childhood home, and the traditional stronghold of the new pope’s beloved Chicago White Sox), where he studies American religious history with an emphasis on Catholicism and the First Vatican Council.
He had wanted to leave earlier to witness the conclave, but had a class he couldn’t miss on its first day, Wednesday, May 7. But when a professor cancelled his Friday lecture and the Vatican announced Leo would be appearing in public on Sunday for the midday “Regina Caeli” (“Queen of Heaven”) prayer in St. Peter’s Square, he immediately booked his ticket.
“I mean, it’s history,” said Powell. “There’s no way I could in good conscience, as someone who studies American religious history, not try to be here and literally see this in person.”
For Powell, the election of Cardinal Robert Prevost to the papacy automatically places him in the pantheon of U.S. history.
“This guy’s a historical figure. It doesn't matter if he falls on his face right now. He’s going to be up there with figures like Billy Graham, Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy.”
Powell spoke to Angelus after Saturday’s vigil Mass at St. Patrick’s Catholic American Parish, located a block away from the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Then-Cardinal Prevost visited the church in May 2024 for a confirmation Mass for students of the prestigious Marymount International School, an American-operated private Catholic school.
Father Matthew Berrios, CSP, told Angelus that he’d spent a “hectic” Friday giving interviews to Italian journalists inquiring about his impressions of the future pope, whom he dined with after the confirmations.
“I would say he’s a little more of a reserved personality,” said Berrios, a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan who was ordained a Pauline priest in 2017. “He’s a lot more measured in speech. You’re not going to get a lot of the off-the-cuff, Pope Francis-style statements.”
“There’s a very clear intelligence to him. But definitely, there’s a certain formality to the way that he carries himself, in the way that he likes things to operate. He’s got a degree in canon law. The man knows procedure and likes to follow it.”
Saturday’s vigil Mass was attended by several dozen American Catholics, most of them tourists looking to pray in a language they could understand.
“OK, so this is quite a week,” Berrios began his homily, drawing laughs. Then he asked for a show of hands from those who’d been in St. Peter’s Square for the white smoke exactly 48 hours earlier.
Several hands went up. “OK, so we have some eyewitnesses to these things,” joked Berrios.
Dennis and Holly Suler from Hobe Sound, Florida, were in Assisi waiting to enter a city festival when they heard about the white smoke. Holly pulled up a live feed of the Vatican broadcast on her phone, and watched Pope Leo’s introduction to the world unfold with an equally anxious Italian policewoman guarding the entrance.
“We were so thrilled that it was an American. We never thought it would be, but it was great as far as we’re concerned,” said Dennis.
Dennis hopes that Pope Leo can help bridge the divisions between conservatives and liberals he’s seen in the Church.
“Hopefully the pope can bring it together, and hopefully he can help foster a positive image for Americans internationally,” he said after the Mass at St. Patrick’s.
Powell expressed a similar hope, saying he liked Pope Francis but appreciated that Leo had already brought back some of the traditional trappings of the papacy that the Argentine had eschewed, like the red mozzetta and stole worn by most popes on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
“I think there are some aspects of the papacy that are nice to keep around, and then to create a continuity and a clarity on the Church’s teachings,” said Powell. “I hope not to have a radical deviation, I just hope maybe a smoothing out of Francis’ edges.”
Powell got to see Leo in St. Peter’s Square the next day for his first “Regina Caeli” address, before rushing back to Chicago in time for a school event on Tuesday. His only regret? Not recognizing John Prevost sooner.
“We just talked baseball” for much of the flight, Powell recalled. But once they got off the plane, the grad student asked for a photo with his temporary companion, who was headed straight to the Vatican to see his brother. And he had a message to pass along.
“Tell your brother, when you meet him: we need your blessings for the White Sox.”
