Vatican Media
VATICAN CITY // Today, former Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected the 267th pope of the Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Leo XIV. His background sheds light on the experiences that he is bringing to the pontificate.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1955, Pope Leo XIV is the first pope from the United States. He is also an Augustinian, having professed final vows in the Order of Saint Augustine in 1981. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1982, and Pope Francis created him a cardinal in September 2023.
In a 2023 interview with the Augustinian Order, then-Cardinal Prevost shared about the saint’s emphasis on belonging to the Church as essential to being a follower of Christ.
The saint has spoken “about how you cannot say you are a follower of Christ without being part of the Church,” then-Cardinal Prevost said. He later elaborated that the saint’s teachings “touch every part of life, and help us to live in communion. Unity and communion are essential charisms of the life of the Order and a fundamental part of understanding what the Church is and what it means to be in it.”
In 1977, he earned a bachelor’s degree in math from Villanova University, and during his time there, he reportedly co-founded the pro-life club “Villanovans for Life.” He went on to study theology at the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago, canon law at the Pontifical Saint Thomas Aquinas University in Rome, and in 1987 earned a doctorate after defending the thesis, “The role of the local prior in the Order of Saint Augustine,” according to his Vatican Press Office biography.
He is bishop emeritus of Chiclayo, Peru. His most recent positions included prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. The independently created College of Cardinals Report describes his approach to his first months as prefect as “characteristically discreet in the media,” and that little is known about where he stands on “key topics.”
The College of Cardinals Report also states that he was in support of Pope Francis’ change allowing divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion and has shown “mild support” of Fiducia Supplicans, the 2023 Vatican declaration allowing non-liturgical blessings of same-sex couples.
The report also states that in 2012 he expressed concern that Western culture fosters “sympathy for beliefs and practices that contradict the gospel,” including the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families made up of same-sex partners and their adopted children,” according to the report.
Throughout his priestly life, he has held a number of leadership positions and responsibilities, which have often overlapped.
He served on mission in Pirua, Peru, from 1985 to 1986, served as a vocations director for an Augustinian province in Illinois, and in 1988 returned to Peru to serve as director of formation for those discerning Augustinian religious life in Chulucanas, Iquitos, and Apurímac.
From 1988 to 1998 he served in various positions, including community prior from 1988 to 1992, director of formation, and teacher of the professed. From 1989 to 1998 he also was the judicial vicar of the archdiocese of Trujillo, and a professor at the “San Carlos e San Marcelo” Major Seminary.
In 1999 he returned to Chicago after being elected provincial prior of the Chicago-based “Mother of Good Counsel” province, and two and a half years later became prior general until 2013, according to his biography. He then served as a teacher of the professed and provincial vicar at the Chicago-based province again.
In March 2025 several survivors of sexual abuse penned a letter requesting a canonical investigation into his handling of an alleged abuse case when he was provincial in Chicago and an alleged case that was brought to his attention when he was bishop of Chiclayo. The survivors alleged that under his authority as province in Chicago, a laicized priest accused of 13 accounts of sexual abuse against minors, was permitted in 2000 to live at an Augustinian friary near an elementary school and that school administration was not aware. The laicized priest was removed from the friary in 2002. The College of Cardinals Report states that the priest was not Augustinian and that then-Bishop Prevost was not involved in the authorization of the priest’s residency at the friary.
Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014, where he ministered until 2023. From April 2020 to May 2021, he also undertook the responsibility of apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Callao.
The 2025 letter requesting a canonical investigation had also claimed that as bishop of Chiclayo, he failed to open an investigation into reports of two priests having sexually abused several women when the women were as young as 9 years old. The Diocese of Chiclayo reported the allegations to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which closed the investigation in 2023 after the Peruvian civil investigation was dropped. According to the College of Cardinals Report, the diocese issued a statement denying that then-Bishop Prevost failed to follow proper procedures and stated that he did open an investigation. He sent the results to the DDF and met personally with the victims, according to the diocese.
He became bishop emeritus of Chiclayo in 2023 when he took on the roles of Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. In 2023 after being called to be the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, then-Cardinal Prevost shared in the interview with the Augustinian Order online about his reaction to the news.
“It is an honour to receive this mandate but, honestly, it is difficult for me to leave Chiclayo after so many years, more than 20 years in Peru, being happy doing what I was doing,” he said at the time. “So, now back in Rome, a city with which I am obviously very familiar. Every day I say to myself: ‘Lord, all this is in your hands. Give me the grace I need to bring this task to a successful conclusion.’ And as I have tried to do throughout my religious life, I said yes, go ahead with the great adventure of being a follower of Christ.”
He also said that to be “a good bishop,” one must “know how to govern, to administer, to organise and to know how to deal with people.”
“But if I had to point out one trait above all others,” he said, “it is that he must proclaim Jesus Christ and live the faith so that the faithful see in his witness an incentive to them to want to be an ever more active part of the Church that Jesus Christ himself founded. In just a few words: to help people come to know Christ through the gift of faith.”