“Peace be with you all,” said Robert Francis Prevost, the first US-born pontiff, on Thursday, after he was elected the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church, taking the name Pope Leo XIV. “I would like peace to reach your families, all peoples, the whole earth.”
Cardinal Prevost, speaking in Italian and Spanish and not in English, embraced his fellow cardinals, who chose him as the successor of Pope Francis, and was quick to quote his predecessor. “We still retain in our ears the voice of Pope Francis, who blessed Rome, and the whole world, on Easter Day. Allow me to follow up on that same blessing. God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail,” he said. “The world needs his light. Humanity needs him as the bridge to be reached by God and his love. Help us to build bridges with dialogue, to always be at peace. Thank you, Pope Francis.”
Prevost was born in Chicago on September 14, 1955, into a family of Spanish, French, and Italian descent. He studied at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, graduating with a degree in theology. His story will likely resonate with and unite the entire American continent, which has the largest number of Catholics.
In 1977 he entered the novitiate of the Order of St. Augustine, in the province of Our Lady of Good Counsel, in St. Louis. At the age of 27, he was sent by the Order to Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum). Then, in August 1981, he made his solemn vows. He received priestly ordination on June 19, 1982, received his licentiate in 1984, and was then sent to work in the mission in Chulucanas, Peru.
In 1987 he received his doctorate with the thesis “The Role of the Local Prior of the Order of St. Augustine.” In the same year he was elected vocations director and missions director of the Augustinian Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel in Olympia Fields, Illinois. In 1988 he was sent to the mission of Trujillo as director of the common formation project for Augustinian aspirants from the vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos, and Apurímac.
In 1999 he was elected prior provincial of the Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel in Chicago. After two and a half years, the Ordinary General Chapter elected him prior general, a ministry the Order entrusted to him again at the 2007 Ordinary General Chapter. In October 2013 he returned to Chicago to be teacher of the professed and vicar provincial, positions he held until Pope Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of Peru’s Diocese of Chiclayo in November 2014, elevating him to the episcopal dignity of titular bishop of the Diocese of Sugar. He took canonical possession of the diocese on November 7 in the presence of Apostolic Nuncio James Patrick Green and was ordained as bishop on December 12 at the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in the cathedral of his diocese. He has been bishop of Chiclayo since September 2015 and has served as second vice president of the Peruvian Bishops Conference since March 2018. Pope Francis had appointed him a member of the Congregation for the Clergy in 2019 and a member of the Congregation for Bishops in 2020.
On April 15, 2020, the pope appointed him apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Callao. And since January 30, 2023, Prevost has been prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. Then, on February 6, 2025, Francis promoted him to the Order of Bishops, assigning him the title of the Suburbicarian Church of Albano.
