A display at Rate Field in Chicago paid tribute to Pope Leo XIV May 9 before a game between the Chicago White Sox and the Miami Marlins. (Carlos Osorio / Reuters / OSV News)
By Maria Wiering
OSV News
Standing on loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica, newly elected Pope Leo XIV smiled, waved and appeared to hold back emotion May 8 as he introduced himself to the world as the 266th successor to St. Peter — the first American to hold that role.
His first words: “Peace be with you!”
Pope Leo, 69, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, is the first pope from the United States. He assumes the chair of Peter with multifaceted leadership experience: He grew up in the Midwest, graduated from Augustinian-run Villanova University in 1977 with a math degree, ministered as a bishop in Peru, and led the Vatican dicastery that helps appoint, form and retire bishops.
Born in Chicago and ordained a priest for the Order of St. Augustine in 1982, Pope Leo held major leadership roles in his religious community before being ordained a bishop in 2014, ministering in the dioceses of Chiclayo and Callao, Peru.
He was installed as the prefect of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Bishops — the powerful Vatican body responsible for choosing bishops throughout the world — in April 2023 and was elevated that September to the rank of cardinal.
In 2013, as he prepared to leave his role as the Augustinians’ global leader, he told Rome Reports that Augustinians “are called to live a simple life at the service of others, and in a special way, to reach out to those who are poor … which includes, of course those who are monetarily poor, but there are many kinds of poverty in today’s world.”
Midwestern roots
Pope Leo was born in suburban south Chicago on Sept. 14, 1955. His family attended St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Dolton, Illinois.
In 1977, Pope Leo entered the novitiate of the Order of St. Augustine in St. Louis. In September 1978, at the age of 22, he professed first vows, and three years later, he made solemn vows.
He earned a theology degree at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago before going to Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum, receiving his licentiate in 1984. Three years later, he completed his doctorate.
By the time he received his doctorate, he had been ordained a priest for the Order of St. Augustine for five years and had ministered for a year in the order’s mission of Chulucanas in Piura, Peru.
In 1987, he was elected the vocations director and missions director for his order’s Midwest province, Our Mother of Good Counsel. A year later, he went to Trujillo, Peru, to direct a joint formation project for the region’s Augustinian aspirants.
Over the course of a decade in Trujillo, he served as the community’s prior, formation director and as a teacher. Meanwhile, he served the Archdiocese of Trujillo for nine years as its judicial vicar.
In 1999, Pope Leo returned to the U.S. to serve as prior provincial for the Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel. In 2001, at age 46, he was promoted to his order’s prior general, considered its supreme authority who oversees its administration and governance.
Pope Leo was reelected to the role in 2007, holding it for a total of 12 years until 2013. Under his leadership, the Augustinian provinces in North America reorganized in 2012 as the Federation of the Augustinians of North America, which fostered greater collaboration while allowing each province some autonomy.
For a year, from October 2013 to November 2014, he served as a “teacher of the professed” and provincial vicar.
New titles, new roles
In November 2014, Pope Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru — an area in the northwestern part of the country that was then home to around 1.1 million Catholics, about 88% of the population at the time. He was simultaneously named a bishop, but of the titular diocese Sufar, under which title he was ordained a month later on Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The following year, on Nov. 7, 2015, he was appointed bishop of Chiclayo.
In 2019, Pope Francis appointed him a member of the Congregation for the Clergy. A year later, he became a member of the Congregation for Bishops.
In January 2023, Pope Leo was appointed to lead the Vatican’s Dicastery of Bishops, replacing Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, and given the personal title of archbishop.
Pope Francis elevated him to a cardinal in September 2023, making him cardinal-deacon of Santa Monica of the Augustinians, a church immediately south of the Vatican dedicated to St. Monica, St. Augustine’s mother. He was the first — and so far only — cardinal named to that church.
In 2023, Pope Francis also named then-Cardinal Prevost president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, which studies and assists the church in Latin America.
Pope Leo’s name is a tribute to Pope Leo XIII, known as the father of Catholic social doctrine, who wrote the groundbreaking 1891 social encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” that responded to the state of industrial society at the time.
Despite connecting himself to a pope who reigned more than 120 years ago, Pope Leo XIV appears to be a thoroughly modern prelate who keeps tabs on current events in Rome, Latin America and the U.S.
Pope Leo XIV enjoys playing tennis; speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese; and reads Latin and German. According to a May 8 interview with his brother John Prevost, Pope Leo is a Chicago White Sox fan.
At age 69, Pope Leo is seven years younger than Pope Francis was when he was elected in 2013, and nine years younger than Benedict XVI when he was elected in 2005. He is 11 years older than St. John Paul II, who was 58 at his 1978 election.
Pope Leo was likely elected on the third vote of the conclave’s second day, after a total of four votes. The 133 cardinal electors entered the conclave on May 7.
Pope Leo has been commended for his interpersonal skills, with veteran American Vatican journalist John Allen Jr. of Crux describing him as “a moderate, balanced figure, known for solid judgment and a keen capacity to listen.”
Not without critics
Pope Leo has also drawn criticism for his alleged role in the permissions given in 2000 for a priest of the Chicago Archdiocese, who had been credibly accused of multiple cases of child abuse, to live in an Augustinian friary less than a block from a school without informing the school.
While that situation occurred before the 2002 Dallas Charter, within which the U.S. bishops established procedures for addressing clergy sexual abuse, then-Bishop Prevost has also been accused of not fully investigating three sisters’ sexual abuse allegations, made in 2022, against two priests in the Diocese of Chiclayo — a charge the diocese has denied.
In remarks given from St. Peter’s loggia before offering his first “urbi et orbi” blessing, Pope Leo commended Pope Francis’ final blessing of the world on Easter morning, the day before he died, saying, “Let me follow up on that same blessing: God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail! We are all in God’s hands. Therefore, without fear, united hand in hand with God and each other — let us go forward. We are disciples of Christ. Christ goes before us.”
Pope Leo also indicated he would continue the legacy of Pope Francis in developing a synodal style within the Catholic Church for the sake of its Gospel mission.
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Follow the pope on Instagram, X
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY — While Pope Leo XIV has deleted the account he began as Father Robert F. Prevost on Twitter, now X, in 2011, the Vatican has launched new accounts for him on X and Instagram.
“The Holy Father Leo XIV has chosen to maintain an active social media presence through the official papal accounts on X and Instagram,” said the Dicastery for Communication.
The first post on the “Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex” account on X was released May 14 and was a quote from his inaugural greeting to the public May 8 when he was elected: “Peace be with you all!.”
His first papal Instagram post featured the same quotation — in seven languages — alongside a photo of him greeting the crowd May 8 from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The new @pontifex Instagram account of Pope Leo XIV had more than 13 million followers by May 16.
