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‘Viva Papa Leo!’ At U.S. Masses, Dawn of Homegrown Pope Brings an Air of Electricity.
The Rev. Gosbert Rwezahura opened Mass on Sunday morning by saying what everyone in the pews was thinking. “Habemus papam!” he exclaimed at Christ Our Savior Parish in South Holland, Ill. Beaming, he added, “He is one of our own!”
It was the first Sunday in American history with an American pope seated on the throne of St. Peter in Rome. At parishes across the country, Catholics filed into the pews with a sense of wonder, hope and pride over Pope Leo XIV.
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.
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Gilad Thaler, Jon Miller, Nikolay Nikolov, June Kim, Paul Abowd and Pierre Kattar
April 14, 2026
Matt Cobo, F.B.I. San Francisco Acting Special Agent in Charge ( right) speaks next to San Francisco Police Chief Derrick Lew (second from right) and San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins (third from right) during a news conference Monday, April 13, 2026, in San Francisco.
Jeff Chiu/AP
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Jeff Chiu/AP
SAN FRANCISCO — The man accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home had written about AI’s purported risk to humanity and traveled from Texas to San Francisco intending to kill Altman, authorities said Monday.
Authorities allege 20-year-old Daniel Moreno-Gama threw the incendiary device about 4 a.m. Friday, setting an exterior gate at Altman’s home alight before fleeing on foot, police said. Less than an hour later, Moreno-Gama allegedly went to OpenAI’s headquarters about 3 miles (4.83 kilometers) away and threatened to burn down the building.
Moreno-Gama is opposed to artificial intelligence, writing about AI’s purported risk to humanity and “our impending extinction,” according to a federal criminal complaint.
“This was not spontaneous. This was planned, targeted and extremely serious,” said FBI San Francisco Acting Special Agent in Charge Matt Cobo during a press conference.
No one was injured at Altman’s home or the company offices, authorities said.
Moreno-Gama faces state and federal charges
Moreno-Gama faces charges including two counts of attempted murder and attempted arson in California state court, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. He tried to kill both Altman and a security guard at Altman’s residence, she alleged. He is set to appear in court Tuesday, and online state court records do not yet show if he has an attorney.
Jenkins said the state charges carry penalties ranging from 19 years to life in prison.
On Monday morning, FBI agents went to Moreno-Gama’s home in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston, where they spent several hours before leaving. He has been charged by federal prosecutors with possession of an unregistered firearm and damage and destruction of property by means of explosives. Those charges carry respective penalties of up to 10 years and 20 years in prison.
The federal court documents do not list an attorney for Moreno-Gama, and he has not yet had his first appearance in federal court.
Authorities allege Moreno-Gama traveled from his home in Texas to San Francisco and visited Altman’s home early Friday morning.
Authorities say Moreno-Gama was opposed to artificial intelligence
When Moreno-Gama was arrested Friday, officials found a document on him in which he “identified views opposed to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the executives of various AI companies,” court documents say. The document discussed AI’s purported risk to humanity and “our impending extinction,” according to the criminal complaint.
Surveillance video images included in the criminal complaint show a person dressed in a dark hoodie and pants that the FBI alleges is Moreno-Gama approaching the driveway of Altman’s home. In various images, the person can be seen tossing the Molotov cocktail, which landed at the top of a metal gate and started a small fire.
Surveillance video images from outside OpenAI’s headquarters allegedly show Moreno-Gama grabbing a chair and using it to hit a set of glass doors. Authorities said Moreno-Gama was approached by the building’s security personnel, who told investigators he “stated in sum and substance” that he came to the headquarters “to burn it down and kill anyone inside,” according to the complaint.
San Francisco police arrested Moreno-Gama and recovered “incendiary devices, a jug of kerosene, a blue lighter, and a document.” Moreno-Gama was being held Monday in the San Francisco County Jail on the state charges, and was expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian said authorities “will treat this as an act of domestic terrorism, and together with our partners, prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law.”
Authorities say Moreno-Gama’s anti-AI document contained threats against Altman
The document in which Moreno-Gama discussed his opposition to AI also made threats against Altman, officials said.
“Also if I am going to advocate for others to kill and commit crimes, then I must lead by example and show that I am fully sincere in my message,” Moreno-Gama is alleged by authorities to have written in the document.
Advocacy groups that have issued grave warnings about AI’s risks to society condemned the violence.
Anthony Aguirre, president and CEO of the Future of Life Institute, said in a written statement Friday that “violence and intimidation of any kind have no place in the conversation about the future of AI.”
Another group, PauseAI, said in a statement that the suspect had no role in the group but joined its forum on the social media platform Discord about two years ago and posted about 34 messages there, none containing explicit calls to violence but one that was flagged as “ambiguous.”
Discord said Monday that it has banned Moreno-Gama for “off-platform behavior.”
Altman addressed the threats in a blog post
Hours after the attack on his house, Altman posted a photo of his husband and their toddler in a blog post addressing the threats against him.
“Normally we try to be pretty private, but in this case I am sharing a photo in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person from throwing a Molotov cocktail at our house, no matter what they think about me,” Altman wrote.
He added that “fear and anxiety about AI is justified” but it was important to “de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics and try to have fewer explosions in fewer homes, figuratively and literally.”
Altman has become a preeminent voice in Silicon Valley on the promise and potential dangers of artificial intelligence. The attack comes days after The New Yorker published an in-depth investigation that touched on concerns some people have about him and the company.
Debate about the impact of AI is growing
The attack came at a time of growing debate about the societal effects of AI assistants like OpenAI’s ChatGPT that millions of people are turning to for information, advice, writing help and to do work on their behalf.
An annual report published Monday by Stanford University called the AI index found that most people believe AI’s benefits outweigh its drawbacks, “but nervousness is growing and trust in institutions to manage the technology remains uneven.”
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