Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, was elected today as the first American pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. The new Holy Father was born in Chicago and attended Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park.
He was elected after a conclave lasting two days and four votes, held after the death of Pope Francis on April 21.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Leo grew up in the Chicago suburb of Dolton and went to the St. Mary of the Assumption parish school on the Far South Side before attending St. Augustine Seminary High School in west Michigan.
After earning his B.S. in mathematics from Villanova University in 1977, he joined the Order of St. Augustine, a mendicant order of friars dedicated to pastoral care, and returned to Chicago—receiving a Masters in Divinity degree from Catholic Theological Union, currently located at 5416 South Cornell Avenue in East Hyde Park. During that period, he taught math part-time at a local Catholic school, Mendel College Prep, and substituted as a physics teacher at St. Rita High School.
Per his Vatican biography, Leo studied at the Pontifical Saint Thomas Aquinas University in Rome before moving to Peru, where he served as judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Trujillo and taught canon law. In 1999, he returned to Chicago as the provincial prior of the city’s Augustinian Province, where he was involved in a scandal in which a priest accused of sexual abuse was moved into the St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park, located near St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School.
In his first remarks on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the new pope paid tribute to Francis before stating in Italian, “God loves us. God loves us all. Evil will not prevail.” He thanked the College of Cardinals for electing him and praised his diocese in Peru: “A faithful people [there] has accompanied its bishop, has shared its faith and has given so much, so much to continue being a faithful church of Jesus Christ.”
Speaking on his vision for the future of the Catholic church, Leo said that “we have to seek together to be a missionary church. A church that builds bridges and dialogue.” He also quoted St. Augustine, saying, “With you I am a Christian, for you a bishop.”
