Vatican City (AsiaNews) – The new pope, Leo XIV is the first pontiff from North America but he is, above all, a pope who comes from a missionary experience, having served the Church of Peru for many years and in different roles.
Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago on 14 September 1955 into a family with roots in Europe. He studied in schools run by the Augustinian, a religious order that is very present in Asia, and began his novitiate at the age of 22 after receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and studying philosophy at Villanova University in Philadelphia.
Sent to study Canon Law at the Pontifical University Angelicum, he was ordained a priest in Rome in 1982. Three years later he left for the mission in Peru, where he initially carried out his pastoral service in the city of Chulucanas. In 1988 he was transferred to Trujillo where he began to take care of the education of new Augustinian religious in Peru.
Elected in 1999 as prior of the Augustinians of the Province of Chicago, two years later the chapter chose him as prior general of the Augustinians, tasked with governing the more than 2,500 religious of the order present in 50 countries around the world, a ministry he carried out in Rome for two terms until 2013.
The following year, Pope Francis sent him back to Peru, entrusting him with the leadership of the Diocese of Chiclayo in the northwest of the country.
He mentioned this ministry tonight as a central experience in his life, immediately addressing a greeting in Spanish to the faithful of his former diocese in Peru. He also chose to become a citizen of that country in 2015.
Bishop Prevost served as vice-president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Peru from 2018 until January 2023 when Pope Francis called him to Rome to lead the crucial Dicastery for Bishops and chair the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
He was created cardinal in the consistory of September 2023, the second to last presided over by Pope Francis.
In an interview with Vatican News in 2023, he spoke about his position in the Roman Curia.
“I still consider myself a missionary,” he stressed. “My vocation, like that of every Christian, is to be a missionary, to proclaim the Gospel wherever one is.
“Certainly, my life has changed a lot: I have the opportunity to serve the Holy Father, to serve the Church today, here, from the Roman Curia.”
It is “a very different mission from before, but also a new opportunity to live a dimension of my life, which simply was always answering ‘Yes’ when asked to do a service. With this spirit, I ended my mission in Peru, after eight and a half years as a bishop and almost twenty years as a missionary, to begin a new one in Rome.”
