The 133 cardinals inside the Sistine Chapel today selected Cardinal Robert Prevost as the 266th successor to St. Peter. The new pope – the first one from the United States – takes the name Leo XIV.

An ecstatic crowed greeted the new pope as he appeared on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. After the initial euphoria, attention will turn to the vision of the new pope and the changes he may bring for the Catholic Church.

Dennis Doyle of the University of Dayton, who has studied the writings and actions of past popes, cautions against expecting too much, as change is difficult to enact in the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis did manage to introduce some changes, such as permitting the blessing of gay couples and offering Communion to Catholics who had divorced and remarried without an annulment. However, he stopped short of making any doctrinal changes.

The question, as Doyle points out, is “to what degree will the new pope stand or not stand in continuity with Francis?” Whatever he does, the fact remains that a new pope “cannot simply reverse official positions that his immediate predecessors have been emphasizing,” he writes.