New Pope Delivers Message for Peace
Top Photo: Official portrait of Pope Leo XIV. Credit: Vatican Media
On May 8, Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected as the first US-born pope and will be known as Pope Leo XIV. After a new pope is elected, his first act is to choose a new name.
Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago in 1955, and his family has deep roots in Louisiana with Haitian and Creole ancestry. He graduated from Villanova University in Pennsylvania with a mathematics degree before studying theology. He earned a Master’s of Divinity from the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago.
When Prevost was 27, he went to Rome to study. He was ordained as a priest in 1982. He also earned a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical College of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
After being ordained, Prevost went to work as a missionary in Peru. He returned to the United States for a few years before returning to work in Peru. While there, he ran an Augustinian seminary in Trujillo.
Not only did he spend most of his career in Peru, Prevost also holds dual citizenship there.
Pope Leo is notable not only for being the first pope born in the United States, but also for being the first Augustinian friar to lead the church. The Order of St. Augustine, which dates back to 1244, says it has 2,800 members across 47 countries.
In 2014, Prevost was appointed apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru. He became a bishop a year later, and he was made a cardinal in 2023 by Pope Francis.
Pope Leo is 69 years old and is now the 267th pope. In his first words as pope, he spoke from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica, paying tribute to the late Pope Francis and emphasizing peace, dialogue and missionary work. He spoke to the crowd in Italian and Spanish, though he did not speak in English. He addressed tens of thousands of cheering Catholics and onlookers by saying, “Peace be with you all.”