VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has become the first sitting pontiff known to have voted in a US general election, after the Holy See confirmed Friday that he submitted a mail-in ballot in Chicago ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
The Holy See Press Office said Leo, formerly Robert Francis Prevost, “has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen, whenever he was eligible to do so.”
The statement added:
“The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes.”
Leo is registered to vote in New Lenox, a Will County suburb south of Chicago where his brother, John Prevost, lives. Kimberly Fladhammer, chief of staff for the Will County clerk’s office, said the pope requested a mail-in ballot on Oct. 3 using his birth name.
The request went to a New Lenox address, and the clerk’s office had not received the completed ballot as of Friday afternoon, she said.
The request was made ten days before Leo’s surgery to remove the lower lobe of his right lung due to a cancer diagnosis.
The 71-year-old pontiff was released from Gemelli Hospital in Rome on Oct. 17 and has been gradually resuming duties. The Vatican did not say how the ballot was returned from Vatican City to Illinois.
The vote is not Leo’s first. Records held by the Illinois State Board of Elections show Robert Prevost voted in five primary elections since 2000, requesting Democratic ballots twice and Republican ballots three times, and cast ballots in general elections including 2024, before his election to the papacy in May 2025.
The records do not show which candidates he supported. Illinois voters must declare a party preference to receive a primary ballot; general elections require no such declaration.
What is new is the office he holds while voting. The Code of Canon Law bars clergy from actively participating in political parties but does not address voting, according to Rome Reports. The pope’s ballot is secret, and the Vatican did not disclose which candidates or measures he supported.
The ballot lands in a midterm cycle that will determine party control of Congress and shape the final years of Donald Trump’s presidency. Leo has publicly clashed with Trump over the US-Israeli war in Iran and the administration’s immigration enforcement.
Trump called the pope “weak” on crime and “terrible” on foreign policy earlier this year.
Leo responded that he was “not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel.”
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich said he hoped the pope’s example “encourages everybody to get out and vote.”
Christopher White, associate director at Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, said Leo was “modeling active civic engagement, something he’s frequently called on U.S. citizens to take up.”
For US Catholics, the practical effect is a reminder that the Vatican is not telling the faithful how to cast a ballot.
For the wider electorate, the ballot is a curiosity with no legal weight beyond Leo’s own vote.
It raises a critical question that the Vatican has not thoroughly addressed: Can a sovereign head of state participate in another country’s elections without venturing into partisan politics?
“If a staff member recognizes the pope’s name as they go through the mail-in ballots, those in the room might want to touch it to receive a blessing,” Clerk Annette Parker said.
News source: https://apnews.com/article/vatican-pope-vote-us-election
