The Vatican confirmed Friday that Pope Leo XIV has voted in next week's U.S. midterm elections, making him the first sitting pontiff in the Catholic Church's 2,000-year history to cast a ballot in an American election.
"Pope Leo XIV has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen, whenever he was eligible to do so," the Holy See press office said in a statement reported by NBC News and CBS News. "The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes."
According to the Will County Clerk's Office, Leo — who remains on the voter rolls under his birth name, Robert Francis Prevost — requested a mail ballot on October 3. Chief of Staff Kim Fladhammer confirmed the request to the Chicago Sun-Times, which first reported the story. The chosen address is in New Lenox, an Illinois suburb where the pope's brother, John Prevost, lives.
The ballot travels from Vatican City to Joliet, Illinois, where it must arrive before the county can count it. The clerk's office told NBC News on Thursday it had not yet received the completed ballot; the Vatican's Friday statement confirmed it had been cast.
The pope, who was born in Chicago and holds both U.S. and Peruvian citizenship, is recovering from surgery earlier this month to remove part of his right lung after a cancer diagnosis. He was released from the hospital on October 17 and is resuming his activities at the Vatican.
The Illinois ballot involves more than the presidential contest the pope has no vote in this cycle. It includes the race to replace retiring Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, Governor JB Pritzker's reelection bid, and several local contests.
The pope's voting record has drawn attention on its own. As Robert Prevost, he voted in five primary elections since 2000 — on Democratic ballots in 2008 and 2019 and Republican ballots in 2012, 2014, and 2016 — according to Associated Press records cited by CBS News. Illinois voters do not register by party and can choose either primary ballot. Journalist Christopher Hale, writing on his Letters from Leo Substack, reported that the pontiff also voted in the 2024 presidential election.
Since his election as the first American-born pope in May 2025, Leo has been an outspoken critic of several Trump administration policies, including the administration's immigration crackdown and U.S. military operations abroad. In April, after Leo called for peace in the war that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes on February 28, President Trump responded on social media by calling the pope "WEAK on crime" and "terrible for Foreign Policy" while taking credit for his papacy.
The pope has framed civic participation as a moral duty. At a general audience in St. Peter's Square on September 2, he told the faithful they should abandon "all passivity and indifference" toward current events.
"We cannot remain as unengaged spectators; rather, we must listen with our hearts, allow ourselves to be challenged, and become involved," the pope said, according to the Catholic News Service.
The Vatican said Leo has a long history of civic engagement in the United States, voting whenever eligible during his nearly two decades as a missionary and then bishop in Peru. An Instagram post circulating this week noted that Leo, a registered Illinois voter, had voted in the midterms; the post's caption identified him only as a registered voter in the state and did not include the Vatican confirmation that followed.
Whether the ballot arrives in Joliet in time to be counted is a matter for the Will County clerk. Illinois accepts mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive within two weeks after — meaning the pope's ballot could still be tallied even if it lands after November 3.
Our Take
Here's what the legacy media won't lead with: this is a pope who has spent the last year lecturing America, trashing its immigration enforcement, and picking fights with a duly elected president — and now he's quietly dropping a ballot into the Illinois mail system to weigh in on a Senate race and a governor's race in a state he hasn't lived in for years. The Vatican calls it civic duty. Fine. But Americans should notice the pattern: the same globalist institutions that want open borders and endless foreign wars are now celebrating a foreign-head-of-state voting bloc with a permanent Vatican City address and a brother's house in Will County as his "residence."
Nobody is questioning the pope's legal right to vote — he's a U.S. citizen, and citizens vote. What conservatives should question is the media's sudden enthusiasm for mail-in ballots arriving from overseas, from a man whose public statements consistently align with the Democrat Party line on the issues of the day. Where were these same outlets when they spent years insisting mail-in voting was "safe and secure"? Funny how that argument disappears when the ballots might not break their way.
Patriots: check your own registration, confirm your address, and vote in person if you can. The pope can vote. So can you. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
