Pope Leo votes in U.S. midterm elections for first time in Church history
Select a version of the text written from a presumed ideological perspective. This is not the original text, but a hypothetical version — how someone with that viewpoint might have phrased it. Tapping the current version again will return to the original or select cleaned version.
Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born pontiff, cast a mail-in ballot in Illinois for the November midterms, a striking moment in the Catholic Church’s long history: a sitting pope taking part in a secular election while insisting citizens have a duty to engage in democracy.
Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost in Chicago, cast a postal ballot in Illinois ahead of the November midterm elections, becoming the first sitting pontiff in the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history to vote in a secular election. The Vatican confirmed that the 71-year-old pope exercised his right as a United States citizen and reiterated his belief that citizens have a duty to participate in democratic processes.
Illinois election officials noted that Prevost, registered at his brother’s address in New Lenox, requested a mail-in ballot on Oct. 3 under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act. The ballot will be counted in races that include the contest for Illinois’s 1st congressional district and the election of a successor to retiring Democratic Senator Dick Durbin.
The pope, who was elected in May 2025 as the first U.S.-born pope, has previously voted in Republican and Democratic primaries and in the 2024 presidential election. The midterms are widely viewed as a referendum on President Donald J. Trump’s second term.
"The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes," the Vatican statement read.
"I’m not afraid of the Trump administration or of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel, which is what the church works for," the pope said in a recent address.
President Trump responded on social media, criticizing the pope’s stance on crime, foreign policy and nuclear weapons, and suggesting the pope’s election was motivated by his American nationality.