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The election of Pope Leo XIV surprised many — but according to priest and missionary expert Monsignor Richard Antall, the roots of his rise can be traced to a bold Church initiative from the mid-20th century.
Fr. Antall wrote in a recent article for Angelus News that a coordinated effort by North American bishops to send priests to Latin America played a foundational role in shaping the new pope’s vocation and global outlook.
“The new pope’s missionary experience is not just about his personal vocation,” Fr. Antall wrote. “In many ways, it is the consequence of an ambitious plan in the mid-20th century that intertwined pastoral plans in North and South America.”
That plan began to take form in 1946 when Maryknoll Father John Considine published a book about American priests assisting in Latin America. More than a decade later, Pope Pius XII issued his encyclical Fidei Donum and created the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
Fr. Antall noted how, under this momentum, Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston founded the Missionary Society of St. James the Apostle to help share personnel and resources between North and South America.
St. John XXIII continued the push in 1961, calling on religious provinces in North America to “tithe” 10 percent of their priests and religious for mission service. The following year, he asked the Augustinian order to go to Peru — where Father Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, would eventually serve.
Fr. Antall sees this trajectory as deeply symbolic.
“Leo is not just ‘American’ in the ‘United States’ sense of the word,” he said. “He is an American, born in the North and raised there, then ‘formed’ in Rome also, but his ministry was shaped by the experience of the Church in the South.”
While the broader missionary vision eventually faded — due to political complications, cultural barriers, and a sharp decline in priestly vocations — Fr. Antall argues it left a lasting mark.
“We have this failed plan to thank for the extraordinary election of an American as Supreme Pontiff,” he wrote.
He believes Pope Leo XIV’s global experience will have special relevance for Catholics in the US.
“In Latin America, students do not learn about two continents, North and South America,” Fr. Antall wrote. “They learn about one continent, which stretches from Alaska to Chile’s Tierra del Fuego.”
Concluding, Fr. Antall reflected: “History often has an underlying structure of irony. In many respects, the ‘failed North American mission to Latin America’ is connected to a turning point in papal and ecclesiastical history. Divine Providence connects the dots.”
