Sri Lanka, May 9 -- The Catholic Church has a new leader.

Robert Prevost, aged 69, will be known as Pope Leo XIV.

He is the first American-born pope to hold the position, and is a dual citizen of America and Peru.

Born in Chicago in 1955, to parents of Spanish and Franco-Italian descent, Robert Prevost was ordained as a priest in 1982.

He spent ten years as a local parish pastor and taught at a seminary in Trujillo, in northwestern Peru.

In his first words as Pope Francis' successor, uttered from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Leo said, "Peace be with you," and emphasised a message of "a disarmed and disarming peace" dialogue and missionary evangelisation.

Pope Leo the Fourteenth spoke fondly of his predecessor, Pope Franc...