We have a Pope, said the Cardinal from the balcony of the Vatican. Of course, he spoke in Latin, after all, this was the Roman Catholic Church. The wait was over, the conclave was complete, now all we had to do was speculate on who the 133 cardinals picked to lead the 1.4 billion faithful.

They picked a guy few tabbed as the frontrunner, at least that was the opinion of the oddsmakers. And, they picked an American, from Chicago, by way of Peru and Rome.

He was Cardinal Robert F. Prevost. We knew little of him, for he did not preside over one of the great American cities. For much of his career, he was assigned to missionary, parish and administrative duty in Peru. He was a member of the order of St. Augustine, an ancient band that follows the teachings of one of the early church leaders. In a story for the Washington Post, the order was described this way: “The main focus for Augustinians is on getting a community together and sharing our lives, our goods, our work,” said the Rev. Allan Fitzgerald, an Augustinian priest, Villanova University professor. The new pope’s latest job was as a Vatican insider chosen to run the committee that recruited and selected new church leaders.

For the faithful Catholics, and those not so, his election provided a moment for them to throw off the awful burden of clergy abuse that cast a pall over the church for the last 10 years or so. It was a moment for the faithful to envision renewal, a chance for them to revisit the fond memories of the family-centered church they grew up in before she, and her clergy, became the butt of bad jokes.

And the name he chose for his reign was Leo XIV. Immediately, church scholars said this was to honor Leo XIII, a strong proponent of social justice and workers' rights.

Almost immediately, the MAGA influencers sharpened their knives and attacked a man they knew little, or nothing, about, other than a couple of social media posts where he suggested POTUS and VPOTUS should rethink their positions on immigrants. A Trumpian gadfly named Laura Loomer called him “anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis,’ adding that it’s ‘GROSS’ that he now leads the Catholic Church.” You can look up the rest of the anti-pope rants on the web, linking him with open borders and fentanyl.

So, who is this new guy? What do we know about him?

Chicago reporters visited his brother John, a retired school principal, and asked him about his brother. First, John denied the rumor that the new pope was a Chicago Cubs fan. No, he was a Southsider, a Sox fan, said the brother. (For the record, he was talking about the Chicago White Sox, not the Boston Red Sox.) Within hours, someone dug up a photo of the new Pope, clad in a white pin-striped shirt under his team jacket, seated in Comiskey Park, rooting for the Sox during the 2005 World Series.

This new pope seems to be a real person, and on most days, he speaks to his brother John. And John revealed a family secret, the brothers play Wordle and Words with Friends. When an AP reporter was chatting with John, his brother called from Rome, but he said he would talk to his brother after the reporter left.

The new pope graduated with a math degree from Villanova. That is news, as many clergy members I have encountered are nervous around numbers. And, yes, he is a Villanova basketball fan. Does this mean the NY Knicks will have the best chance to reach the NBA finals? Three of the Knicks' best players, Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges, went to Villanova. Will they, and the Knicks, get some special divine help from the new Pope? We’ll see.

The New York Times looked up the new Pope’s family tree and found his mother’s relatives had Haitian roots in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward. This is a traditional Catholic area, a melting pot of people with African, Caribbean and European roots. It is part of the unique Creole culture of New Orleans.

In many ways, this first American pope epitomizes our nation of immigrants. We are a giant melting pot that grew out of the post-Columbian discoveries, beginning when the Old World colonists exploited, collided and intersected with the enslaved laborers they brought to harvest the riches of the new.

While some of the firebrands of one side of our political culture use heritage as a weapon to separate us, will this new and uniquely American Pope help unite us again? After all, the Roman Catholic pope is known as the Pontiff. The word pontiff is derived from the Latin word pontifex, meaning bridge-builder.

Could that be?