Month: May 2025

Robert Francis Prevost is elected the 267th Pope of the Catholic Church on May 8, 2025. He chose the name Leon XIV.

He was born on September 14, 1955, in Chicago. He spent his childhood and adolescence in the United States, studying first in the minor seminary of the Augustinian Fathers and then, at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, where, in 1977, he received a degree in Mathematics and studied Philosophy. On Sept. 1 of that year in St. Louis he entered the novitiate of the Order of St. Augustine (Osa), in the province of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Chicago, and made his first profession on Sept. 2, 1978. On August 29, 1981, he made his solemn vows.

He received his education at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, graduating with a degree in Theology. And at the age of 27, he was sent by his superiors to Rome to study Canon Law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). In Urbe he was ordained a priest on June 19, 1982.

He received his license in 1984 and the following year was sent to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Piura, Peru (1985-1986).

In 1988 he reached the mission in Trujillo, also in Peru, as director of the common formation project for Augustinian aspirants from the vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos and Apurímac. In the span of eleven years he held the positions of community prior (1988-1992), director of formation (1988-1998) and teacher of the professed (1992-1998) and in the Archdiocese of Trujillo of judicial vicar (1989-1998) and professor of Canon Law, Patristics and Morals in the Major Seminary “San Carlos and San Marcelo.” At the same time he was also entrusted with the pastoral care of Our Lady Mother of the Church, later erected parish under the title of St. Rita (1988-1999), in the poor outskirts of the city, and was parochial administrator of Our Lady of Monserrat from 1992-1999.

In 1999 he was elected prior provincial of the Augustinian Province “Mother of Good Counsel” in Chicago, and two and a half years later, at the Ordinary General Chapter of the Order of St. Augustine, his brethren chose him as prior general, confirming him in 2007 for a second term.

In October 2013 he returned to his Augustinian Province, in Chicago, and was director of Formation at St. Augustine’s Friary, first counselor and vicar provincial; positions he held until Pope Francis appointed him, on Nov. 3, 2014, apostolic administrator of the Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo and at the same time titular bishop of Sufar. On Sept. 26, 2015, he was appointed bishop of Chiclayo by the Argentine pontiff.

On Jan. 30, 2023, the Pope called him to Rome as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, promoting him to archbishop. And in the Consistory of Sept. 30 of the same year he creates and publishes him cardinal, assigning him the diaconate of Santa Monica.