Who is this new Holy Father, this Pope Leo XIV, a native of Chicago and Augustian Frair with a doctorate in Canon Law, who, while an American, is not an American Bishop (not part of the USCCB) as his episcopal see was in Peru?
Joe Doyle, of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, gives us a good introduction here:
Pope Leo is the first American born Pope, only the second Latin American prelate (after Francis) to become Pope, and the seventh member of the Order of Saint Augustine to ascend to the papacy.
He is one of only three popes in the last two centuries—along with Francis and Gregory XVI—to be a member of the so-called regular clergy, that is to say, to be a member of a religious order.
He is the first former general of a religious order, in nearly 500 years, to be elected Supreme Pontiff.
Born in Chicago in 1955, Robert Prevost graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Villanova University [run by the Augustinians] in 1977, followed by a Master of Divinity from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and both a licentiate and doctorate in canon law from the Angelicum in Rome.
Professed as an Augustinian [an OSA, that is one of the Hermits of Saint Augustine, not a Canon Regular. In spite of being called “hermits,” they are mendicants, i.e., friars] in 1981 and ordained to the priesthood in 1982, Father Prevost joined the Augustinian Mission in Peru. After a brief return to the United States, Prevost spent ten years as a seminary Rector in Trujillo.
In 1999, he became the Augustinian Provincial in Chicago. In 2001, Prevost was elected Prior-General of the Order of Saint Augustine, serving until 2013.
In 2014, Pope Francis appointed him Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, elevating him to Bishop in 2015. Prevost was the Ordinary of that diocese until 2023, during which time he also served as Vice-President of the Peruvian Bishops Conference.
In January of 2023, Pope Francis made Bishop Prevost a titular archbishop and appointed him to one of the most powerful positions in the Roman Curia—Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, the official responsible for vetting and recommending candidates for the episcopate.
Eight months later, in September of 2023, he was created a Cardinal.
Edgar Beltrán / The Pillar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Here is some analysis, courtesy of Phil Lawler’s Catholic World News:
Trained as a canon lawyer (with a doctorate from the Angelicum), the new Pontiff has maintained a low profile in Rome, and did not appear at the top of early listings of papabili after the death of Pope Francis. But his name was mentioned frequently in the last days leading up to the conclave, raising speculation that he might emerge as a compromise candidate if more liberal prelates could not command the necessary two-thirds majority. His relatively quick election—after many seasoned Vatican-watchers had predicted a lengthy conclave—suggests that the speculation was on target.
The new Pope has not figured prominently in public disputes that have roiled the Catholic Church in recent years. But he has spoken out clearly against abortion and gender ideology, and opposed the drive for female ordination as “clericalizing women.” He expressed some sympathy for the move by Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia, to allow for divorced-and-remarried Catholics to receive the Eucharist, but he hesitated at Fiducia Supplicans, saying that blessings for same-sex couples would suggest support for “beliefs and practices that contradict the Gospel.” He has supported the late Pope’s quest for a “synodal” Church. On political issues he has taken more conventionally liberal stands, supporting immigration (and chiding Vice President J.D. Vance for his interpretation of the ordo amoris), and in 2020, while stationed in Peru, joined in mourning the death of George Floyd and calling for an end to racial hatred.
Pope Leo was brought to prominence by Pope Francis—who had brought him to Rome, naming him head of a powerful dicastery before he become an archbishop. And a conclave dominated by cardinals that Pope Francis had appointed was unlikely to reject his legacy. Yet in his first appearance before the noisy crowd in St. Peter’s Square, he distanced himself from his predecessor in a small but significant way, wearing the mozzetta and stole that Pope Francis had pointedly declined. (Another indication of differences—at least in style—will come if Pope Leo chooses to move into the apostolic palace, in the papal suite that Pope Francis eschewed.)
There is much good to be found in the first sermon Pope Leo preached as Vicar of Christ, suffused as it was with supernatural faith. In it, the Roman Pontiff preached a Christological, scriptural, patristic, and missionary message — speaking of the Church as “an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world.” He called the Church also, “the mystical body” (very Augustinian of him!) and “a city set on a hill.”
I suggest that we recommend the new Supreme Pontiff to the maternal care of Our Lady of Good Counsel, a beautiful title that also names a particular miraculous image of the Holy Virgin, dating from the fifteenth century, that is housed in a fourteenth-century Augustinian church in Genazzano, Italy.
Here she is:
