How Harry Styles Ended Up at the Announcement of the New Pope

Harry Styles caught a piece of history when he saw the new pope being announced last year — but it wasn’t planned.

In May 2025, Styles was spotted among the thousands of people who gathered at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City as Pope Leo XIV was declared Pope Francis’ successor as head of the Catholic Church. It turns out, the pop star was simply in the right place at the right time.

“I was getting a haircut in Rome,” Styles, 31, said in a Friday, January 23, interview with BBC Radio 1’s Greg James.

The “Aperture” singer continued, “I heard all these people start shouting, ‘Habemus papam! Habemus papam!’ People just running down the street. So the guy cutting my hair stopped cutting my hair, and he was like, ‘Habemus papam! There’s a new pope!’ So then he finished up, and I was like, ‘I’m [a] five-minute walk [from there],’ so I walked over there. It was wild.”

James joked that only the new pope could upstage the former One Direction star, to which Styles quipped, “I was like, ‘Who’s this getting all this attention?’”

The British singer will continue his jet-setting ways later this year as he embarks on an ambitious seven-city, 50-date tour, which he announced on Thursday, January 22.

Styles’ Together, Together tour will kick off in May at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam. The singer will then perform in London at Wembley Stadium, São Paulo, Mexico City, New York City, Melbourne and Sydney. Guests include Robyn, Shania Twain, Jorja Smith, Fcukers, Jamie xx, Skye Newman, Baby J and Fousheé.

As part of the tour, Styles will have a 30-night residency at Madison Square Garden in New York City between August and October. (He previously performed 15 nights at MSG on his Love on Tour in 2022.)

The news comes after Styles announced the release of his fourth studio album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., which is set for release on March 6. The album will consist of 12 tracks, including lead single “Aperture,” and is executive produced by longtime collaborator Kid Harpoon.

“It was amazing for me,” Styles said in Friday’s interview of recording “Aperture,” adding, “We had most of the album done, and a lot of it was exploring the themes that the song is exploring. Getting this song at the end of the process when we were feeling the freest and having a lot of fun … and it felt like the mission statement of what the album was about.”

He continued, “I’d had a couple years away from work stuff, and a lot of big realizations about generally opening up more to the world and allowing some more positive things to come into my life. It was the culmination of all that was happening around me making this record. [‘Aperture’] was like a perfect little bow, and once this song happened it was like, ‘Oh, the record’s finished.’”