From the neighborhoods of Chicago, to the halls of the Vatican, Robert Francis Prevost has made history as Pope Leo XIV—the first American to lead the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Leo XIV was born on September 14, 1955 in Chicago and is the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Because he was born in Chicago he became the first American Pope in history, and has a dual U.S.-Peruvian citizenship; he has also been a missionary in Peru.
After graduating high school in 1973, Pope Leo then went to Villanova University, receiving his bachelor’s degree in math in 1977. Later in 1982, he was ordained priest. He studied at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and earned his master’s degree in divinity in 1982. In 1985, Pope Leo began his missionary work, and was made chancellor from 1985-86. From 2018-2023, he served as second vice-president and as a council member of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference. On Thursday, May 8, he became Pope Leo XIV.
Pope Leo XIV has been the people’s pope for almost five months now. According to Canon Law, the pope “possess supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely.”
According to United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Pope Leo XIV said in his first address: “We want to be a synodal church, a church that moves forward, a church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close above all to those who are suffering.”
According to USCCB, Pope Leo XIV has six points that are important to him: the return to the primary of Christ in proclamation, the missionary conversion of the entire Christian community, growth in collegiality and synodality, attention to the ‘sensus fidei’ (the people of God’s sense of faith); loving and caring for the least including the rejected; courageous and trusting dialogue with the contemporary world in its various components and realities.
