The Catholic Church has a new leader. Robert Francis Prevost is the new Pope Leo XIV. He is the first pope from the US, and also has Peruvian citizenship, but will represent the global Catholic Church.
Prevost, 69, who chose the name Leo XIV over a hundred years after the last pontiff to take this name, originally hails from Chicago, where he was born on September 14, 1955. Following his schooling, first degree and ordination as a priest in 1982, he left the US and never really returned there for any extended period of time. Prevost studied and completed his doctorate in Rome.
The new pope has been a member of the Order of St. Augustine since 1977. This order was founded in the 13th century and today focuses on pastoral care and educational work. For over ten years, from 1985 onward, he was active in a number of functions for the order in Peru, at times he was also a professor of theology, or, more recently, a provincial superior of the Augustinians. In 2001, he moved to Rome and became Prior General of the Augustinian order. There he resided in an impressive complex just beyond the colonnades of St. Peter’s Square. Incidentally, the fact that various television stations made use of the complex’s various roof terraces for live broadcasting during the conclave will certainly do the order’s coffers a lot of good. But Prevost’s path was set to take him to Peru again, to one of the poorest, if not the poorest, parts of the country. Pope Francis sent him to Chiclayo in November 2014, first as Apostolic Administrator, then as local bishop.
Peru has seen various ecclesiastical problems in recent decades, as it is far away from Rome and the country’s church is occasionally under the influence of reactionary US forces. Francis would not have sent anyone to Peru that he wanted to get rid of in Rome.
In 2019 and 2020, Pope Francis made Prevost a member of two important Roman congregations. This meant that the bishop maintained regular contact with the Vatican. The next step came at the end of January 2023: Prevost became Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops (an important role in a church in which many seek to build a career) and President of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. At his penultimate consistory in 2023, Francis appointed Prevost as a cardinal. Somewhat surprisingly, the final rung of the ecclesiastical career ladder followed just five months later when the cardinals elected him pope. Italian newspapers had already listed him as a candidate in advance, praising him as an "American mediator" who — according to the newspaper La Stampa –— could become the "surprise of the conclave." The cleric combines "doctrinal rigor, pastoral compassion and a missionary vision of the Gospel," it wrote.
Will he continue Francis’ policies?
The election of Prevost is certainly not a departure from the past years under the late Pope Francis. In fact, he’s expected to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps in many ways – especially on social issues. But on some matters, Prevost took a firmer stance than his predecessor. On the controversial issue of the ordination of women as priests, Prevost cautioned that the Church must be different from society. "Clericalizing women doesn’t necessarily solve a problem," he argued. "It might make a new problem." His predecessor Bergoglio often seemed like a foreign body within the Vatican system, a fact that made many outsiders appreciate him all the more. Prevost, however, is someone who knows the system from the inside and who insists on it being upheld. Against this backdrop, it remains to be seen how closely he will follow or deviate from his predecessor’s lead.
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News post in May 9, 2025, 9:04 am.
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