VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo XIV, the American Robert Prevost, said “Peace be with you” in his first words as pope, offering a message of peace and dialogue “without fear.”

From the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica, history's first American pope recalled he was an Augustinian priest, but that he was above all a Christian above all and a bishop, “So we can all walk together.”

He spoke in Italian and then switched to Spanish, recalling his many years spent as a missionary and then archbishop of Chiclayo, Peru.