Sourced online from the Vatican News by Tracy Cabrera
Pope Leo XIV, or Robert Prevost, cast his vote for the U.S. general elections on Friday, October 30, 2026. (Photo from Instagram)
Pope Leo XIV, formerly Robert Prevost of Chicago, Illinois, cast his mail-in vote on Friday, October 30, in the United States general elections, becoming the first pontiff to do so in a polls that would decide America’s political future with the Trump era now slowly coming to an end.
The Vatican confirmed that the 71-year-old American pontiff submitted his mail-in ballot in the city ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, citing Leo’s long-standing belief in civic participation.
“(Leo) has exercised his right to vote as a United States citizen” as he has done “whenever he was eligible to do so,” the Holy See press office announced in a statement.
It likewise disclosed that Pope Leo had also voted while he was living in Peru, where he lived as a missionary priest and bishop for over two decades.
“The Holy Father expresses his belief in the right and the duty of citizens to participate in democratic processes,” it stressed.
Leo holds both U.S. and Peruvian citizenship and is also the head-of-state of a foreign country, the Holy See. The city-state is an absolute monarchy with no political elections.
U.S. federal law allows citizens living abroad, even those working for foreign governments, to vote via absentee ballot.
Americans working for foreign governments aren’t automatically at risk of forfeiting their U.S. citizenship, though the U.S. State Department says on its website that it may “actively review” the citizenship status of Americans who “serve as a foreign head of state, foreign head of government or foreign minister.”
In this year’s general election, Illinois voters are deciding whether to elect Illinois governor Jay Robert ‘JB’ Pritzker to a third term. They are also filling an open U.S. Senate seat that would be vacated by longtime Catholic Democrat Richard Joseph ‘Dick’ Durbin who will retire in January the following year.
There are no statewide issues on the Illinois ballot. President Donald Trump is not on the ballot but he has campaigned hard to try to preserve Republican control of the U.S. House and Senate for the final two years of his second term.
Since 2000, Leo, or Robert Prevost, has voted in five primary elections, requesting Democratic ballots twice and Republican ballots three times, this based on records from the Illinois State Board of Elections.
