By Antonio S. Lopez
Leo XIV greeted, from the Central Loggia or balcony of Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica, the 100,000 faithful who had stood in vigil for hours waiting for news of a new pope at St. Peter’s Square, to introduce himself as the new leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
In his first speech as the 267th pontiff and as the bishop of Rome, the former Cardinal Robert “Bob” Francis Prevost, 69, greeted the city of Rome and the world’s Catholics.
Speaking for 10 minutes, in Italian and Spanish, the Chicago-born American with perfect English pledged to work for uniting the Catholic faithful to Jesus and to the Gospel. Pope Leo said:
“Evil will not prevail”
“God loves us, all of us. Evil will not prevail. We are all in the hands of God. Without fear, united, hand in hand with God and among ourselves, we will go forward. We are disciples of Christ, Christ goes before us, and the world needs His light. Humanity needs Him like a bridge to reach God and His love. You help us to build bridges with dialogue and encounter so we can all be one people always in peace.”
With those words, Leo XIV begins what could be a long reign during a time of unprecedented turmoil and tension amid rising protectionism, trade shocks, growing militarism and authoritarianism, unbridled conflict and violence (from Armenia to Gaza to Ukraine to Yemen), irreversible global warming and evolving technology that creates machines that are more intelligent than humans.
More than 56 ongoing conflicts
There are today at least 56 ongoing conflicts involving 92 countries, including the two greatest powers – the US and China, who are engaged in a faceoff in the West Philippines in the world’s most strategic ocean, the Pacific.
Prevost is the first Augustinian, the first American and the second pope from the Americas, after the Argentinian Pope Francis.
Hugely qualified
Prevost is hugely qualified for the papal job, one of the most backbreaking, physically demanding, and death-defying despite its enormous soft power and influence. He sees life as a religious experience, a service for others, a true sense of happiness, and the true meaning of life.
He is a mathematician and steeped in canon law. A polyglot, he speaks five languages – English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, and reads German and Latin.
He has a deep sense of spirituality, which he interprets as being of service to those who have less in life—in faith, income, privilege, and social standing.
While Chicago-born, he has spent a good part of his life overseas in intense missionary work and service to the people.
In this sense, he has a global perspective and will use the power of the pulpit to delve on many issues, parlaying what Leo himself calls “the true grandeur of the Church”.
The fastest rise to papacy
It took only 19 months for Robert Francis Prevost to rise from cardinal to pope, the fastest for any pope in the last 200 years.
On Sept. 30, 2023, Pope Francis named Prevost a cardinal and one of his closest advisers, being head of the Vatican department that names bishops and supervises 5,400 bishops.
By May 8, 2025, Prevost became the 267th pope, garnering 100 votes on the fourth ballot, in one of the quickest papal elections, in 24 hours, despite the record number and diversity, of electors, 133 from 70 countries. Leo succeeds Pope Francis who died on April 21, 2025, at age 88, after a 12-year reign.
The perfect Pope
Leo XIV is the perfect pope in an age of crippling divisiveness and troubling technology.
He inherits Francis’ missionary zeal and outreach to the Catholics who are at the peripheries of the world – the poor, the marginalized, the downtrodden, making him welcoming to progressives of the Church hierarchy.
At the same time, Pope Leo is strict on doctrine – the marriage of only a man and a woman, homosexuality is an aberration and a sin, no women as deacons and no to abortion. Such views make Leo a centrist.
The challenge of AI
On Saturday, May 10, 2025, Pope Leo met in formal audience the cardinals for the first time and set out his vision of his papacy. He singled out artificial intelligence as one of the most crucial issues humanity faces.
Leo repeatedly cited Francis and “his example of complete dedication to service and to sober simplicity of life, his abandonment to God throughout his ministry and his serene trust at the moment of his return to the Father’s house. Let us take up this precious legacy and continue on the journey, inspired by the same hope that is born of faith.”
He made clear a commitment to making the Catholic Church more inclusive and attentive to the faithful and a church that looks out for the “least and rejected”.
Second Vatican Council reforms
Pope Leo is fully committed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church.
During his first Sunday as pope on May 11, 2025, before a crowd of 150,000 at St. Peter’s Square, Pope Leo delivered a message of peace and belted into hallelujah in praying the Regina Caeli (“Queen of Heaven”). And then went on to denounce wars.
War never again
Leo said: “The immense tragedy of the Second World War ended eighty years ago, on May 8, after having claimed 60 million victims. In today’s dramatic scenario of a piecemeal third world war, as Pope Francis stated many times, I too address the world’s leaders, repeating the ever-timely appeal: ‘Never again war!’.”
“I carry in my heart the sufferings of the beloved Ukrainian people. May everything possible be done to reach an authentic, just and lasting peace, as soon as possible. Let all the prisoners be freed and the children return to their own families,” he pleaded.
Gaza Strip
“I am deeply saddened by what is happening in the Gaza Strip: may there be an immediate ceasefire! Let humanitarian aid be provided to the stricken civil population, and let all the hostages be freed,” Leo prayed, as he also “welcomed with satisfaction the announcement of the ceasefire between India and Pakistan,” adding, “I hope that through the upcoming negotiations, a lasting accord may be reached soon.”
Why is his name Leo
Prevost’s choice of Leo as his name is indicative of what he intends to do as the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics and a global influencer.
“There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution,” said Leo, meeting the cardinals in a formal audience for the first time Saturday, May 10. “
In our own day, the church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor,” he said.
Meeting the cardinals on May 10, for the first time since his election, Pope Leo confirmed he chose his name in homage to Pope Leo XIII, recognizing the need to renew Catholic social teaching to face today’s new industrial revolution and the developments of artificial intelligence “that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”
A unifying figure
Says The New York Times: “Pope Leo XIV is expected to be a unifying figure after years of fractious ideological tensions between the progressive and conservative wings of the Catholic Church.”
Prevost’s old media posts slam US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
Before he died, Pope Francis sent a letter to US bishops decrying mass deportations. Vance, a recent Catholic convert, had justified the policy through the idea of ordo amoris, or “order of love,” which ranks or prioritizes love and duty. “The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’” Francis wrote.
Then Cardinal Prevost posted on X: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t rank our love for others.”
Trump reaction
“What a great honor for our country!” Trump gushed about the first American pope.
Pope Leo XIV is seen as reserved, cautious, judicious, calm. He is warm and accessible but not to the extent of kissing babies and washing the feet of inmates. “He is not a showboat,” recalls a long-time friend.
Cardinal Tagle on Pope Leo
“He is a very level-headed person. He’s not the kind of person who is guided by just impulses and reactions,” said Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, 67, told reporters Friday after Pope Leo’s election. “He listens and, if needed, he would study something. He would not immediately decide, but he would study it first. But when he comes back, you will see that everything is clear.”
Recalling the two-week conclave of cardinals to deliberate on issues and elect Pope Francis’ successor, Tagle said Pope Leo “was always calm and composed”.
“He has a humorous side, he has a sense of humor, and he has a loud voice when he laughs,” Tagle noted. Tagle, Cardinals Pablo Virgilio David and Jose Advincula were electors from the Philippines at the conclave.
Pope Leo’s background
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, OSA, was the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and archbishop-bishop emeritus of Chiclayo, Peru’s fourth largest city, after Lima, Arequipa, and Trujillo, with a population of 800,000.
In high school he entered the seminary to become a priest. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics in 1977 from Villanova University in Philadelphia and received an honorary Doctor of Humanities, honoris causa, from the University in 2014. He earned a Master of Divinity from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago in 1982 and was ordained a priest on June 19, 1982. Pope Leo XIV went on to earn both licentiate (1984) and doctorate (1987) degrees in canon law from the Pontifical College of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. Before that, he was sent to work in the mission of Chulucanas, in Plura, Peru (1985-1986).
He was the prior general of the Order of Saint Augustine from 2001 to 2013, before returning to Peru as the bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023.
CNN quotes Rev. John Lydon, who was together with the new pope as an undergrad at Villanova and was also together in Peru: “He’s not an American pope, he’s a pope who happened to be born in the US.”
Pope Leos were reformers
Past Pope Leos were said to be reformers. Pope Leo XIII was elected in 1878 and wrote the encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” the Church’s catechism on the rights and the dignity of capital and labor, and on the need to ameliorate “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.”
The first Pope Leo, Leo the Great (391-461), is best known for having stopped Attila the Hun from invading Italy in 452. He was also a doctor of the church.
In a TV interview in 2023, Cardinal Prevost described his work for Pope Francis:
“I’ve been a missionary my whole life, working in Peru. But I am American, and I think I do have some insights into the Church of the United States – the need to be able to advise and work with Pope Francis and to look at the challenges that the Church of the United States is facing… with a healthy dialogue.”
Peru stint
Prevost first came to Peru in 1985, with an Augustinian mission in the prelature in Chulucanas, near the border with Ecuador, until 1986. He returned in 1988, spent ten years as head of the Augustinian seminary in Trujillo, Peru’s third most populous city. Also in the north, where he taught canon law and served as a judge on the regional ecclesiastical court.
He returned to the US in 1998 and was elected provincial of the Augustinian province of Chicago, 2001 to 2013. He went back to Peru in 2014 when Pope Francis appointed him as apostolic administrator of the diocese of Chiclayo. In November 2014, he became the bishop of Chiclayo, until 2023 when he became its archbishop. On Sept. 30, 2023, Francis made Prevost a cardinal.
He was twice elected head of the worldwide Augustinian Order, from 2001 to 2013. The religious order is known for its focus on unity, harmony, friendship, charity, and service.
He spent more than 20 years in Peru, serving as a parish pastor, diocesan official, seminary teacher, and administrator. He was judicial vicar and as a professor of canon, patristic and moral law at a seminary in Peru’s third city, Trujillo.
In 2023, Pope Francis appointed him prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, and made him a cardinal on Sept. 30, 2023.
A citizen of the United States by birth and Peru by naturalization, Leo XIV is the first pope from the U.S. or North America, the first from Peru, and the second from the Americas after Francis. He is the first pope from the Order of Saint Augustine.
Prevost spent two decades as a missionary in Peru before being elected head of the Augustinians for two consecutive terms.
Prevost was born in a hospital on Sept. 14, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of three brothers to Louis Marius Prevost, of French and Italian descent, and Mildred Martínez, of Spanish and Haitian descent. Robert has two brothers, Louis Martín and John Joseph who call him “Rob”. Others addressed him as “Bob”.
Robert Francis’ father served in the Navy during World War II and was a superintendent of schools in a Chicago suburb. His mother was a librarian with a master’s degree in education and had two sisters who were nuns. The Prevosts lived in a tiny brick house bought in 1949.
Rob’s brothers recall that as a boy of six or seven, he wanted to play as a priest while their friends wanted to play as soldiers.
Rob served as an altar boy. he grew up in a family of immigrants. “I was born in the United States… But my grandparents were all immigrants, French, Spanish… I was raised in a very Catholic family, both of my parents were very engaged in the parish,” he told the Italian network Rai.
Although Leo was born in the US, the Vatican describes him as the second pope from the Americas, after Francis of Argentina.
BBC quotes Jari Honora, a genealogist and historian in the US state of Louisiana, said Leo has strong ties to New Orleans’ black community.
He told the BBC that the new pontiff’s maternal grandparents lived in a now-demolished home in the city’s seventh ward, and she also rented a place in the iconic Pontalba building in New Orleans’ French Quarter.
Pope Leo’s grandparents are described as black or mulatto in historical records.
Rob’s brothers say they had always identified themselves as white after moving to Chicago. “It’s a common practice among black families looking to escape racial segregation,” says BBC.
Said Rev. Peter M. Donohue, OSA, president of Villanova University:
“Known for his humility, gentle spirit, prudence and warmth, Pope Leo XIV’s leadership offers an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to our educational mission, through an Augustinian lens, as we pursue intellectual and spiritual growth.”
Here is the Vatican version of Pope Leo’s biography:
In 1987, he defended his doctoral thesis on “The Role of the Local Prior in the Order of Saint Augustine” and was appointed vocation director and missions director of the Augustinian Province of “Mother of Good Counsel” in Olympia Fields, Illinois (USA).
The following year, he joined the mission in Trujillo, also in Peru, as director of the joint formation project for Augustinian candidates from the vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos, and Apurímac.
Over the course of eleven years, he served as prior of the community (1988–1992), formation director (1988–1998), and instructor for professed members (1992–1998), and in the Archdiocese of Trujillo as judicial vicar (1989–1998) and professor of Canon Law, Patristics, and Moral Theology at the Major Seminary “San Carlos y San Marcelo.”
At the same time, he was also entrusted with the pastoral care of Our Lady Mother of the Church, later established as the parish of Saint Rita (1988–1999), in a poor suburb of the city, and was parish administrator of Our Lady of Monserrat from 1992 to 1999.
In 1999, he was elected Provincial Prior of the Augustinian Province of “Mother of Good Counsel” in Chicago, and two and a half years later, the ordinary General Chapter of the Order of Saint Augustine elected him as Prior General, confirming him in 2007 for a second term.
In October 2013, he returned to his Augustinian Province in Chicago, serving as director of formation at the Saint Augustine Convent, first councilor, and provincial vicar—roles he held until Pope Francis appointed him on Nov. 3, 2014, as Apostolic Administrator of the Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo, elevating him to the episcopal dignity as Titular Bishop of Sufar.
He entered the Diocese on Nov. 7, 2024, in the presence of Apostolic Nuncio James Patrick Green, who ordained him Bishop just over a month later, on December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in the Cathedral of Saint Mary.
His episcopal motto is “In Illo uno unum”—words pronounced by Saint Augustine in a sermon on Psalm 127 to explain that “although we Christians are many, in the one Christ we are one.”