Leo XIV, the first American Pope

The Catholic Herald• May 8, 2025

Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, 69, has been elected the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. He has taken the papal name of Pope Leo XIV. He is the first pope from the United States.

As Crux’s John L Allen previously wrote in his “Papabile for the Day” series, once upon a time, it was said that the idea of an American pope was unthinkable. In the beginning, it was for basically logistical reasons – steamships from the New World took so long to reach Rome that American cardinals often arrived too late to vote, and in any event they were never part of the political sausage-grinding before the conclave began.

Later, the veto on an American pope became geopolitical. You couldn’t have a “superpower pope”, or so the thinking ran, because too many people around the world would wonder if papal decisions were really being crafted in the Vatican or at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Today, however, that logic feels superannuated. America is no longer the world’s lone superpower, and, in any event, dynamics inside the College of Cardinals have changed. Geography is largely dead as a voting issue; cardinals no longer care what passport a candidate holds, but rather what spiritual, political and personal profile he embodies.

And now, lo and behold, the world has its first pope from the United States of America, who succeeds Pope Francis, the 266th pope.

The new 69-year-old pontiff served as a cardinal as head of the Vatican’s ultra-powerful Dicastery for Bishops under Pope Francis for the past two years. That made him responsible for advising the pope on picking new bishops around the world, which is, inter alia, a great way to make friends in the Catholic hierarchy.

As his fellow prelates got to know the former Augustinian superior, many of them like what they see: a moderate, balanced figure, known for solid judgment and a keen capacity to listen, and someone who doesn’t need to pound his chest to be heard.

Born in Chicago in 1955 into a family of Italian, French and Spanish origins, Prevost went to high school at a minor seminary run by the Order of St. Augustine, called the “Augustinians”. From there he enrolled at Villanova University in Philadelphia, eventually earning an undergraduate degree in mathematics in 1977. He joined the Augustinians the same year and began studies at the Catholic Theological Union, where he earned a Master of Divinity degree in 1982. (Prevost is actually the first CTU alumnus to be named a cardinal.)

Next he was shipped off to Rome, where he earned a doctorate degree in canon law from the Dominican-run University of St. Thomas Aquinas, popularly known as the “Angelicum”.

In 1985 Prevost joined the Augustinian mission in Peru. His leadership qualities were quickly recognised, as he was named chancellor of the territorial prelature of Chulucanas from 1985 to 1986. He spent a couple of years back in Chicago as the pastor for vocations for his Augustinian province before returning to Peru, where he would spend the next decade running an Augustinian seminary in Trujillo while also teaching canon law and serving as prefect of studies in the diocesan seminary.

There’s an old rule in clerical life, which is that competence is its own curse – your workload tends to expand in direct proportion to the perception that you’re gifted at getting things done. Thus it was that in addition to his day jobs, Prevost also put in stints as a parish priest, an official at diocesan headquarters, a director of formation for Trujillo and the judicial vicar for the diocese.

Prevost returned to Chicago again in 1999, this time to serve as prior of his province. It was during this period that he would have a brush with the clerical sexual abuse scandals, signing off on a decision to allow an accused priest to reside in a priory close to a school. Though the move would later draw fire from critics, it came before the US bishops adopted new standards in 2002 for handling such cases, and his signature was basically a formality for a deal that had already been worked out between the archdiocese and the accused priest’s spiritual advisor and overseer of a safety plan.

In 2001, Prevost was elected the Prior General of the worldwide Augustinian order, with its headquarters in Rome at the Augustinian Pontifical Patristic Institute, known as the “Augustinianum”, which is located immediately adjacent to St. Peter’s Square and tends to be prime real estate for meeting visiting clergy and bishops from around the world. Prevost would serve two terms in the post, earning a reputation as a deft leader and administrator, before returning briefly to Chicago from 2013 to 2014 as a director of formation for the order.

In November 2014, Pope Francis appointed Prevost apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru, and a year later he became the diocesan bishop. Historically speaking, the Peruvian bishops have been badly divided between a left wing close to the liberation theology movement and a right wing close to Opus Dei. In that volatile mix, Prevost came to be seen as a moderating influence, reflected in the fact that he served on the conference’s permanent council and as vice-president from 2018 to 2023.

This past February, Pope Francis inducted Prevost into the exclusive order of Cardinal Bishops, a clear sign of papal trust and favour – and this despite the fact, according to observers, that Prevost and the late pontiff didn’t always see eye-to-eye; but Francis nevertheless saw in the American prelate a man he felt he could rely upon.

Evidently, enough of the 133 cardinal-electors felt similarly. The world has a new pope. Pope Leo XIV.

RELATED: Papabile of the Day: Cardinal Prevost could be first ‘superpower’ pope for US

Photo: Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, Robert Francis Prevost, arrives on the main central balcony of the St Peter’s Basilica for the first time, after the cardinals ended the conclave by electing him as the new pope, Vatican, 8 May 2025. (Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP) (Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images.)