Pope Leo XIV

Robert ‘Rob, Bob’ Francis Prevost (1955-) was the third son of a second generation French-Italian father and a New Orleans Creole mother who moved to Dolton in Chicago’s suburban South Side. His catechist father was a World War II veteran, and his mother graduated from DePaul University in Chicago. Stirred by his catechist father, Bob emulated a priest, praying in Latin at age six. Two neighbors prophesied that he would be the first American pope.

A choir and altar boy, Bob enrolled in a Seminary High School. He graduated from Villanova University in Philadelphia with a BS in Mathematics the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago with a Master’s in Divinity and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome with a Doctorate of Canon Law. Along the way, he served as an Augustinian novice in St. Louis and was ordained in Rome.

Father Bob became a Peruvian missionary in 1985, serving as an Augustinian vocational and missions director in Illinois in 1987 before returning to Peru to recruit and teach canon law to Peruvian priests. Prevost protested political corruption and violence, and publicly opposed the human rights violations of Marxist guerillas, often travelling on horseback to do so.

Father Prevost became an Augustinian prior provincial in 1999, Prior General of the Augustinian Order in 2001, Bishop of Chicalyo and a naturalized Peruvian citizen in 2014, Prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops and Cardinal Deacon in 2023, and Cardinal-Priest and Pope Leo XIV in 2025. A humble scholar, Leo is the first Pope from: an English-speaking country since Adrian IV (1154-9), North America, the Augustinian order, and the first White Sox fan.