Pope Leo XIV told NBC News’ Lester Holt on Monday that Catholics who strayed from the church may return in part because it now has an American-born leader.
Holt was part of NBC News’ team covering a Vatican meeting with media from around the world when he had a brief conversation with the new pope.
“At the end of his remarks, he stood up and he went into the crowd,” Holt said on NBC’s “TODAY” show. “He came down several aisles, and eventually came to me, and I asked him I think the question a lot of people have, ‘What’s the importance of having an American pope?’ And he said to me, ‘You tell me.’”
“Then he went on to offer an anecdote he had heard that suggests that people are coming back to the church because there is an American pope,” Holt said.
Leo was born on the South Side of Chicago and raised in a suburb called Dolton.
As for whether the pope is coming back to visit his hometown anytime soon, Holt said that seems unlikely. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“And that falls in line with much of what we’ve heard from experts here, that he’s got a lot of work to do on this end, at the Vatican before we see him on the road,” Holt added.
The NBC Nightly News anchor described the unexpected encounter a “highlight-of-the-career type moment for me.”
“As he greeted my fellow reporters and me at a gathering of journalists, my first thoughts were that he’s very much a man at ease, and a man who seems very comfortable in his own skin, a man with a self-deprecating sense of humor,” Holt said.
“Often, when top leaders work what we call a rope line and shake hands with people, there’s this pressure to greet as many people as possible and it can feel hurried,” Holt said. “But he seemed very willing to engage.”
The pontiff spoke with Holt after he made an impassioned plea for peace and expressed solidarity with imprisoned journalists in his first news briefing since becoming pope. Leo called for “the precious gift of free speech and of the press” to be protected.
Leo, 69, was elected last week as the first pope from the United States.
While the bulk of the audience appeared to consist of the legion of journalists who descended on the Vatican from around the world to cover Leo’s selection, Holt said there also appeared to be a few non-reporters in the crowd who brought along babies to be blessed, and that the new pope happily obliged.
There was also somebody who brought over a baseball for Leo to sign. The pontiff’s family says he grew up a fan of the Chicago White Sox.
