Harry Styles Reveals the Hilarious Reason He Ended Up in the Crowd at Pope Leo XIV’s Conclave Election

We finally know why Harry Styles was in the crowd for Pope Leo XIV’s conclave election.

Styles, 31, released his new single “Aperture” on Thursday, Jan. 22 and gave an interview to BBC Radio 1 about what he’s been up to for the past few years — including when fans spotted him in Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican when Pope Leo XIV was elected as the late Pope Francis’ successor.

“I was getting a haircut in Rome,” revealed the Grammy winner.

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“I heard all these people start shouting, ‘Habemus papam! Habemus papam!’ People just running down the street,” recalled Styles. “So the guy cutting my hair stopped cutting my hair, and he was like, ‘Habemus papam! There’s a new pope!’”

The “As It Was” artist continued, “So then he finished up, and I was like, ‘I’m [a] five minutes walk from there,’ so I walked over there. It was wild.”

BBC Radio 1 host Greg James joked the Pope might be the only person who could upstage Styles, who quipped in response, “I was like, ‘Who’s this getting all this attention?’”

The 2025 papal conclave occurred in May, and fans shared photos online of Styles standing in the crowd while sporting a blue jacket, sunglasses, and a grey baseball cap emblazoned with “Techno is My Boyfriend.”

Styles’ hat may just have nodded at the sonic direction of his upcoming album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., which comes out on March 6. “Aperture,” a five-minute-long dance track, marks the project’s first single.

However, the song “actually came last” in the creative process, Styles told BBC Radio 1. “It was kind of amazing for me,” he said. “We had most of the album done, and a lot of it was exploring a lot of the themes that I think the song is exploring.”

“Getting this song at the end, it was kind of when we were feeling our freest and just really having a lot of fun at that point,” he continued, noting that “Aperture” felt like “almost the mission statement of what the album was about.”