WE HAVE A NEW POPE! Just like his predecessor, the late Pope Francis, this Augustinian missionary cardinal is considered as one coming from the peripheries having served with deep devotion the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, a struggling church with a challenging Catholic population.
Clearly, he was not a favorite of media and by surprise, or miracle from the Divine Guidance of the Holy Spirit, he got the ⅔ vote of the 133 (age qualified) elector-cardinals from around the globe.
Prior to his election, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who chose the name Pope Leo XIV, was handpicked by Francis as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops– one of the highest positions in the Vatican.
The Vatican News said this first Augustinian Pope, Leo XIV is the second Roman Pontiff – after Pope Francis – from the Americas. He was born in Chicago but devoted his missionary years in Peru. But unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Robert Francis Prevost, 69, is from the northern part of America though he spent several years as a missionary in Peru before being elected head of the Augustinians for two consecutive terms.
GONE TO PH TWICE
Robert Cardinal Pervost has been to the Philippines twice: the first in 2004 to bless the Augustinian Friary in Mohon, Talisay, Cebu, and the second in 2010 in Intramuros to celebrate Mass at St. Augustine Church during the Order of Augustine’s Intermediate General Chapter. Netizens pray he would visit again.
The new pope was born on September 14, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois, to Louis Marius Prevost, of French and Italian descent, and Mildred Martínez, of Spanish descent. He has two brothers, Louis Martín and John Joseph.
He spent his childhood and adolescence with his family and studied first at the Minor Seminary of the Augustinian Fathers and then at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where in 1977 he earned a Degree in Mathematics and also studied Philosophy.
On September 1 that year, Prevost entered the novitiate of the Order of Saint Augustine (O.S.A.) in Saint Louis, in the Province of Our Lady of Good Counsel of Chicago, and made his first profession on September 2, 1978. On August 29, 1981, he made his solemn vows.
His theological education was at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and at age 27 he was sent by his superiors to Rome to study Canon Law at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum).
‘[H]e was not a favorite of media and by surprise, or miracle from the Divine Guidance of the Holy Spirit, he got the ⅔ vote of the 133 (age qualified) elector-cardinals from around the globe.’
AUGUSTINIAN MISSIONARY
In Rome, he was ordained a priest on June 19, 1982, at the Augustinian College of Saint Monica by Archbishop Jean Jadot, then pro-president of the Secretariat for Non-Christians, which later became the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and then the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
Prevost obtained his licentiate in 1984 and the following year, while preparing his doctoral thesis, was sent to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Piura, Peru (1985–1986). In 1987, he defended his doctoral thesis on “The Role of the Local Prior in the Order of Saint Augustine” and was appointed vocation director and missions director of the Augustinian Province of “Mother of Good Counsel” in Olympia Fields, Illinois (USA).
In 1988, he joined the mission in Trujillo, also in Peru, as director of the joint formation project for Augustinian candidates from the vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos, and Apurímac. In 11 years, he served as prior of the community (1988–1992), formation director (1988–1998), and instructor for professed members (1992–1998), and in the Archdiocese of Trujillo as judicial vicar (1989–1998) and professor of Canon Law, Patristics, and Moral Theology at the Major Seminary “San Carlos y San Marcelo.”
He was also entrusted with the pastoral care of Our Lady Mother of the Church, later established as the parish of Saint Rita (1988–1999), in a poor suburb of the city, and was parish administrator of Our Lady of Monserrat from 1992 to 1999.
In 1999, he was elected Provincial Prior of the Augustinian Province of “Mother of Good Counsel” in Chicago, and two and a half years later, the ordinary General Chapter of the Order of Saint Augustine, elected him as Prior General, confirming him in 2007 for a second term.
IN CHRIST, WE ARE ONE
In October 2013, he returned to his Augustinian Province in Chicago, serving as director of formation at the Saint Augustine Convent, first councilor, and provincial vicar—roles he held until Pope Francis appointed him on November 3, 2014, as Apostolic Administrator of the Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo, elevating him to the episcopal dignity as Titular Bishop of Sufar.
He entered the Diocese on November 7, in the presence of Apostolic Nuncio James Patrick Green, who ordained him Bishop just over a month later, on December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in the Cathedral of Saint Mary.
His episcopal motto is “In Illo uno unum”—from Saint Augustine’s sermon on Psalm 127 which means “although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.”
He was appointed Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru by Pope Francis from 2015 to 2023. In March 2018, he was elected second vice-president of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, where he also served as a member of the Economic Council and president of the Commission for Culture and Education.
In July, 2019, Pope Francis appointed him a member of the Congregation for the Clergy and on November 21, 2020, a member of the Congregation for Bishops. On April 15, 2020, he was also appointed Apostolic Administrator of the Peruvian Diocese of Callao.
On January 30, 2023, the Pope called him to Rome as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, promoting him to the rank of Archbishop.
Francis made him Cardinal in the Consistory of September 30, 2023 and assigned him the Diaconate of Saint Monica, which he officially held on January 28, 2024. As head of the Dicastery, he participated in the Pope’s most recent Apostolic Journeys and in both the first and second sessions of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on synodality, held in Rome from October 4 to 29, 2023, and from October 2 to 27, 2024, respectively.
On October 4, 2023, Pope Francis appointed him as a member of the Dicasteries for Evangelization (Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches), for the Doctrine of the Faith, for the Eastern Churches, for the Clergy, for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, for Culture and Education, for Legislative Texts, and of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State.
Finally, on February 6, 2025, Pope Francis promoted him to the Order of Bishops, granting him the title of the Suburbicarian Church of Albano. He celebrated on February 9 the Mass presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square for the Jubilee of the Armed Forces, the second major event of the Holy Year of Hope.
During Pope Francis’ hospitalization at “Gemelli” Prevost presided over the Rosary for Pope Francis’s health in Saint Peter’s Square on March 3.
TRUMP-VANCE CRITIC
Before being elected Pope, Prevost criticized US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance wrote on his X account, a handful of disapproving posts about the Republican leaders’ policies that caused outrage among die-hard Trump conservative supporters, including activist Laura Loomer, even as the president himself expressed pride at having an American in charge at the Vatican.
“To have the pope from the United States of America, that’s a great honor,” Trump said at the White House. Asked if he would meet with Leo, Trump said “they’ve already called.”
White House officials did not comment about the criticisms on Prevost’s account. Staff at the White House his election as the first American-born pope, Reuters reported. In his first public appearance, Pope Leo XIV expressed support from Francis and shunned the spotlight.
In February, Prevost reposted an article headlined, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.”
In April, when Trump had a meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to discuss using a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place to jail suspected gang members flown from the US, Prevost reposted a comment that included: “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed?”
FOLLOW FRANCIS’ SHADOW
Pope Leo is expected to follow in the footsteps of Francis, a champion of the poor and of immigrants, who also had his differences with the Trump administration. Vance played down those differences after meeting with Francis at the Vatican the day before he died, but they were substantial. Francis had called Trump’s immigration policies a disgrace.
Supporters of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement are disdained by his appointment: “He is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis,” Loomer wrote on X.
“Pope Leo XIV: Registered Chicago Republican and pro-life warrior OR Open borders globalist installed to counter Trump?” wrote right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
Vance, a Catholic, said he was sure millions of American Catholics and other Christians would pray for Leo’s success.
“May God bless him!” Vance wrote on X.
Pope Leo opposes abortion, as do Trump and Vance. But he supports work to combat climate change, according to a post urging followers to sign a Catholic climate petition. Trump removed the US from the Paris climate accord that fights global warming.
He has also spoken out against racism. At the height of the 2020 racial justice movement that swept the globe after the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, Prevost retweeted a series of posts on his X account, urging the eradication of prejudice and hatred. “We need to hear more from leaders in the Church, to reject racism and seek justice,” he wrote in a May 30, 2020, post.
Trump has done away with diversity, equity and inclusion policies within the federal government and among its contractors, tools that supporters say were used to fight back against a US history of racial discrimination and bias.