The last 5 pontiffs have held audiences with the news media.

Here’s what we’re covering:

• Audience with the press: Francis and other past pontiffs used their first speech to the news media to deliver a message to journalists who will continue to cover the Vatican during their papacy, as well as to the 1.4 billion Catholic faithful.

• Antiwar message: Leo returned to the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica where he was introduced as the new pope, using his first Sunday address to call for peace. “Never again war,” he said to a roar from a massive crowd that had gathered. He called for an “authentic, just and lasting peace” in Ukraine and an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

• First days: On Friday, the morning after his election, Leo celebrated Mass in the Sistine Chapel with the cardinals who had chosen him, pledging in his homily to lift up “ordinary people.” Leo met with the cardinals again on Saturday, saying he would continue the work of Francis in steering the church in a more missionary direction.

Over the years, less time has passed between a pope’s election and his audience with reporters. Paul VI spoke to the press eight days after his election on June 21, 1963. Some have speculated that he did so partly because his father had been a lawyer and a journalist.

John Paul I held an audience with reporters six days after his election on Aug. 26, 1978, while John Paul II did so five days after his election on Oct. 16, 1978. Benedict XVI’s audience with the media came four days after his election on April 19, 2005, while Francis met with reporters three days after his election on March 13, 2013.

There have been some commonalities in the speeches delivered by the pontiffs in those audiences. Praise for the previous pope has tended to be a feature. Francis described his predecessor as “venerable,” while Benedict XVI lauded his predecessor as “unforgettable.” John Paul II described John Paul I as “great” and Paul VI called his predecessor, Pope John XXIII, “amiable and wise.”

Another common feature is praise for the reporters themselves and their hard work in covering the conclave. Members of the news media cheered when Francis told the journalists present that during an “intense period” they had “really worked, didn’t you?” In his address, Benedict XVI commended the journalists who had been working far from home and putting in “long hours” in what were at times “difficult conditions.” John Paul I praised the reporters’ “sacrifices and hard work.”

Pontiffs also usually acknowledge the importance of the news media and urge journalists to work hard to responsibly report on the complexity of the Catholic world.

Francis called on the press “to understand more fully the true nature of the church, as well as her journey in this world, with her virtues and her sins.” Benedict XVI said “the responsible contribution of each and every one is needed, so that instruments of social communication can provide a positive service to the common good.” John Paul II told members of the news media: “When you report on the life and activity of the Church, try even more to grasp the authentic, deep and spiritual motivations of the Church’s thought and action.”

Paul VI had plenty of good things to say about the news media in that first encounter. But he did sound somewhat miffed about some of the coverage of the conclave that elected him, describing it as “fantastic,” but also “inexact” and “inappropriate.”

He conceded, “We shall be lenient toward these — alas! not unusual — journalistic arbitrations,” given that the overall coverage was “as a whole, considerate and benevolent toward our humble person, and serious and deferential toward the Holy See.”

Chiclayo, in northern Peru, is the country’s fifth-largest city and was the pope’s home from 2014 to 2023. Here he is known for traveling the region’s mountains and coast for long hours by car, and occasionally on horseback, and for his forceful sermons in fluent Spanish.

To celebrate him, hundreds of people filled the lush plaza in front of the city’s towering, yellowing cathedral. There were nuns in white habits and church groups in matching vests. Flanking the cathedral doors were two giant banners with pictures of a smiling Pope Leo.

The swirling dancers — performing the “dance of the little devils of Túcume,” a nearby region — were the capstone event. Fireworks shot out of a headdress worn by the principal devil, who fought an angel. Several who were present called the dance a representation of the battle between good and evil.

In the religious segment of the event, tambourines rattled as the new bishop of Chiclayo, Edinson Farfán, took to the microphone.

He recalled the pope as “a shepherd who smelled of the sheep” — a phrase used repeatedly in Chiclayo in recent days to refer to Pope Leo as a man who was close to his congregation.

“Leo XIV has taught us to live the Gospel through closeness to the poor, to the most vulnerable, to those who suffer, the migrants, the refugees,” said Bishop Farfán. “He is a man deeply sensitive to social justice.”

Chiclayo has rarely, if ever, had such a celebrity connection, and in recent days it has glittered with excitement. New street signs have gone up: “Welcome to Chiclayo, the city of Pope Leo XIV.” Restaurants are offering Pope specials. (“Happy Mother’s Day!” read the board outside the Trebol, a restaurant next to the cathedral. “Today: Chiclayan goat, the favorite of Pope Leo XIV. WELCOME!!!”)

And by the weekend, the regional tourism board had organized a pope tour for the news media, featuring places that figured prominently in the former bishop’s time in Chiclayo.

Chiclayo was religious before the pope arrived in 2014, and it still is. There are eight separate masses in the main cathedral on Sundays, and hundreds of people attend each one, said Father Jorge Millán, a priest in Chiclayo who is close to the pope. What the pope did was encourage people to take their faith beyond the church and participate in social work, he said.

During the ceremony on Saturday, Bishop Farfán said that the pope, as bishop, had “accompanied the Holy Father Leo XIV on his pilgrimage so that he may now accompany and guide the universal church. From Chiclayo, from Latin America — the continent of hope — to the rest of the world!”

The crowd burst into a cheer: “Papa! Amigo! Chiclayo está contigo!” (“Pope! Friend! Chiclayo stands with you!”)

At Christ Our Savior, the pride was personal: Today’s parish was formed from others in the area around the South Side of Chicago that includes a now-closed church where the pope attended as a child.

Father Rwezahura put it simply: “We are the home parish of the pope!”

“I’m so full and so proud, I don’t know what to do,” said Janice I. Sims, 75. “I’m definitely blessed because I lived long enough to see it happen.”

Others there traded anecdotes about brushes with the future pope, back when he was known as Robert Prevost: the music director who played at a wedding he officiated, the deacon who went to high school where his mother was the school librarian.

At the standing-room-only 10:30 a.m. Mass at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago, the Rev. Ton Nguyen began his homily by exclaiming “Viva Papa Leo the 14th!” The congregation applauded. Outside the church, yellow and white bunting hung in celebration.

“My heart is overwhelmed with joy that we have an American Pope, and he is from Chicago,” Father Nguyen said.

Catholics at other services around the country were no less ebullient and were starting to think ahead to their hopes for the new papacy. Perhaps Leo could attract more young people to church, inspire more men to become priests or help unify an often fractious Catholic population in his home country. At 69, he could lead the church for decades.

“He already won over the hearts of the whole world,” said Amelia Coto, 70, who was attending a Spanish-language Mass at Gesù Catholic Church in downtown Miami. “We were without a father, but now God gave us this father we desired so much.”

Ms. Coto is from Honduras, and she teared up when talking about Leo. Like others at Spanish-language Masses in Miami on Sunday, she expressed optimism that a Spanish-speaking pope who lived for decades in South America might be able to sway American immigration policy.

“I hope his arrival will help this new president change, stop all those deportations that Trump is doing to Latinos,” she said.

In New Orleans, the pope’s mother’s family had roots in the Black Creole community, where African, Caribbean and French influences blend. In the city this week, social media feeds were overloaded with images of the pope’s face superimposed in everyday New Orleans scenes. Eating a bowl of gumbo. Showing off his footwork in a second-line parade. Popping his head out of a front door to ask, “How’s your mama and dem?”

Angela Rattler, 69, was attending Mass on Sunday at Corpus Christi-Epiphany Catholic Church in the Seventh Ward. When she first heard the pope speak, tears flowed down her face, she said. “He appears to be such a humble man.”

It was Mother’s Day, which is not a Christian holiday but one where church attendance is usually high anyway. Still, the pews seemed especially full at some parishes.

At St. Ann Parish in Coppell, Texas, all 1,300 seats inside were filled, along with a few hundred people seated in a courtyard at Sunday’s 10 a.m. Mass. The Rev. Edwin Leonard planned a homily that emphasized the vocation of motherhood. But then “the Holy Spirit did a beautiful thing,” he told his congregation, and another topic felt more fitting.

“So it is on Mother’s Day that I’m going to speak about the Holy Father,” Father Leonard said.

Among traditionalists, who had a rocky relationship with the open and informal Pope Francis, some wondered whether Pope Leo might reopen broader access to the traditional Latin Mass. Pope Francis cracked down on the traditional Mass, celebrated by Catholics around the world until the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

At a Latin Mass at St. Damien Catholic Church in Edmond, Okla., worshipers expressed cautious optimism about the prospect. “There is no way to be sure what he’ll do,” the Rev. Joseph Portzer said in his homily. “But we do see that some of the first words that he said were to talk about unity in the church.”

Father Portzer was among those who found the pope’s American identity intriguing. “We will have an unusual experience being governed by someone who thinks like an American, a Midwestern American,” he said. “It’s going to mean a lot to us to have an American mind-set governing the church.”

For him, that meant a practicality in governing and the possibility that “we will be able, as well, to understand the way he thinks.”

When Father Leonard in Texas heard the new pope’s name on Thursday, the first thing he did was to look up whether he had political or ideological leanings, he told his congregation.

“Mea culpa,” he said in the only Latin words heard during the Mass. “We should not try to fit our pope into our American liberal or conservative camps. If you did that, shame on us.”

Back at Christ Our Savior in the south suburbs of Chicago, a large population of immigrants from Nigeria worshiped along with white and Black families who have lived on the South Side for decades. The pope’s home parish is now a place that in many ways reflects the global church that its favorite son is now charged with leading. Father Rwezahura is from Tanzania, and the deacon serving with him on the altar on Sunday, Mel Stasinski, has lived in Chicago his whole life.

United by a faith shared by 1.4 billion Catholics around the world, they were also connected by their sheer joy on Sunday. As Diane Sheeran, 70, described how she felt when she got the news about Leo: “I had a grin for two days.”

Reporting was contributed by Robert Chiarito in Chicago; Mary Beth Gahan in Coppell, Texas; Breena Kerr in Edmond, Okla.; Katy Reckdahl in New Orleans; and Verónica Zaragovia in Miami.