When Catholic cardinals broke with convention and elected the first American pope in the church’s nearly 2,000-year history, they settled on a Chicagoan who has spent much of his adult life abroad.
Robert Prevost, the cardinal who emerged on the Vatican balcony on Thursday as Pope Leo XIV, lived and worked in Peru as a missionary and parish priest—so long he eventually obtained dual citizenship. More recently, Prevost, 69, has served the Vatican as a close aide to the late Pope Francis .
In selecting Prevost, the conclave appears to be betting that his mixed identity—a pope both of America and the world—will serve him well as leader of a global church trying to navigate a time of turmoil and transition .
Its center of gravity is increasingly spread across a distant periphery, including Latin America, where Prevost enjoys popularity and strong relationships. Yet its American flock remains highly influential and wealthy even as its members are riven by the same divides—over immigration, cultural issues and identity—that have inflamed politics across much of the West.
Added to that, the new pope will also be challenged to respond to ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as an unpredictable American president tearing at the West’s postwar fabric.
Prevost has said little in public, particularly about some of the most divisive issues in the church, such as the role of women. What he has said indicates he will continue his liberal predecessor’s pastoral emphasis on outreach to the poor and care for the environment.
“To be a bishop is not to live in a palace, but to walk with the people,” he told the Vatican News in a recent interview, echoing Francis’ common touch.
In a February post on X, he took issue with Vice President JD Vance’s attempt to invoke an ancient church teaching about the hierarchy of love, known as the ordo amoris, to defend the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“JD Vance is wrong,” he posted . “Jesus does not ask us to rank our love for others.”
Still, several observers described the one-time math major’s style as more measured than Francis, whose casual comments often generated unwanted headlines and controversy.
In his chosen name, for example, and his selection of traditional garb for his first appearance, some saw subtle signs to those members of the faith yearning for a post-Francis turn back toward tradition.
“I think those were gestures that maybe he was trying to extend an olive branch to the more conservative wing of the church,” said Joshua Mercer, co-founder of CatholicVote, a group that backed Donald Trump and whose co-founder was, in turn, appointed the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.
“We hope this will be a pope that unifies the church,” Mercer added.
Prevost’s election on Thursday upended the longstanding assumption that an American wouldn’t become pope because the church would be wary of appearing to ally itself too closely with the world’s superpower.
“I’m not going to handicap anybody in terms of their chances. But I think that’d be a stretch,” Blase Cupich, Chicago’s Archbishop, told the Sun-Times last month when asked about the prospect of an American pope.
The early betting odds in Las Vegas listed Prevost well behind other potentially historic choices, such as the Philippine Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle or Ghana’s Peter Turkson. In recent days, though, chatter about Prevost picked up among close Vatican observers.
In his native Chicago, the choice sparked elation. Mary Simons, a 53-year-old French teacher from the Hegewisch neighborhood on the city’s far South Side, jumped in her car with her mother shortly after hearing the news. They were off to visit St. Mary of the Assumption, a shuttered church where Pope Leo attended mass as a boy.
“Nobody thought we would have an American pope, so I was stunned, and I was crying,” she said. She said she hopes the church, with a statue of Mary in front of a broken stained-glass window above the main entrance, will now make a comeback. “It’s such a pretty church, and I think people will start coming here, you know, so it might rejuvenate the whole area.”
Father Giacomo Costa, special secretary at the Synod, who worked with Prevost in recent years, described him as a man who spoke softly behind the scenes and—unlike Francis—wasn’t given to improvisation.
“He was always listening, taking part, contributing, but he never tried to impose his point of view,” he recalled. “He didn’t have an ideological approach.”
An ‘easygoing’ guy
Robert Prevost was born into a Catholic family in Dolton, a suburb on the southern edge of Chicago, in September 1955. His father, Louis, was a school administrator. His mother, Mildred, was a librarian. For Robert and his two brothers, their young lives were anchored by Catholic schools and the Church.
“He started as an altar boy and now he’s pope,” said John Doughney, 69, who attended grade school with the new pope. He remembered Prevost as not only one of the best students but also unusually mature and “incredibly kind and inclusive.”
“Those are not characteristics that you always see from 13-year-old boys,” said Doughney, a longtime public school educator.
After eighth grade, Prevost left for Michigan to attend the St Augustine Seminary High School. It was a formative exposure to the Order of Augustine he would later join and eventually lead—first in the American Midwest and then globally.
He earned a math degree from Villanova University in 1977 before entering the seminary and then traveling to Rome for doctoral studies.
Tom McCarthy, a fellow Augustinian and chaplain of St. Rita High School on Chicago’s South Side, has known the new pope for 40 years. When McCarthy was a young priest it was Prevost who named him president of St. Rita.
“He is a very easygoing guy. He loves a good time, he loves to be with people,” McCarthy said Thursday.
Even when he was in Peru and Rome, Prevost would return to Chicago to see old friends. McCarthy recalled one occasion, in particular, when Francis appointed Prevost Bishop in 2014 and St. Rita held a mass and dinner to celebrate. “He was there afterwards and he stayed for a minimum of one-and-a-half or two hours taking pictures with people, laughing with them. Some people would say ‘I gotta go.’ Not Bob,” McCarthy said.
The influence of Peru
Prevost spent most of his career working outside the U.S., as a missionary and later a bishop in Peru—an experience that marked him profoundly.
“The part of ministry that most shaped my life was Peru,” Prevost said in a talk later as he reflected on his time there. In 1985, three years after he was ordained a priest, Prevost joined the Augustinian mission to the small city of Chulucanas in the desertic region of far northern Peru.
When “you’re a missionary you learn to do everything, from electronics to auto mechanics and things like that,” Prevost noted. He added that “I can only say how gifted I feel because of what I gained from my years working in Peru.”
After a brief return to the U.S., he spent a decade at the Augustinian seminary in Peru’s third-largest city, Trujillo, and teaching canon law at a diocesan seminary, according to the College of Cardinals Report, which is produced by an independent team of Catholic researchers.
Pope Francis appointed him to head the diocese in the coastal city of Chiclayo in 2014 in Peru’s north. He was named bishop of Chiclayo a year later.
Patricia Campos, the rector of the Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo Catholic University in Chiclayo, recalled that when he first arrived, “Everyone stared at him and he didn’t know anyone. But “he managed to get very close to the people and be a real pastor for the people.”
During a damaging El Niño weather event that caused floods in northern Peru, “he went out into the countryside to help people,” she said. “When the university was flooded, he helped to move furniture.”
His time in Peru wasn’t without controversy. The College of Cardinals report said allegations surfaced in April 2022, during Prevost’s tenure as bishop, that two priests were accused of molesting three girls at the Chiclayo diocese. Some accused Prevost of covering up for the accused priests, but the diocese denied the assertions and said Prevost followed the correct procedures and attended to the victims.
Climbing the ranks
Prevost’s final job before ascending to the papacy was as the head of the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops, a powerful post in which he recommended bishops to Francis for dioceses all over the world.
Francis’ decision to install him, in 2023, was a sign of his trust in Prevost, who was elevated to cardinal that same year. That experience also meant he developed relationships with many of the 133 cardinals who gathered in Rome for the conclave and ultimately elected him.
In a rare interview with Vatican News, the Holy See’s news site in 2023, he endorsed some of Francis’ signature initiatives, including a focus on the poor and openness to involving lay people, including women, more directly in the life of the church.
“We are often worried about teaching doctrine,” Prevost told Vatican News. “But we risk forgetting that our first duty is to communicate the beauty and joy of knowing Jesus.”
In a separate interview during Easter that year, Prevost also called for peace in Ukraine as he lashed out at Russia’s invasion.
“This is an authentic invasion, imperialist in nature, where Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of power,” he told a local Chiclayo news outlet, Expresion. “It’s proven that crimes against humanity are being committed in Ukraine.”
Looking forward
On Thursday, at Leo’s alma mater in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, faculty and staff gathered around a television as soon as they were certain the smoke from the Vatican had turned white, said Ferdinand Okorie, academic dean of the Catholic Theological Union. Leo received a master’s in divinity there.
Then came the announcement in Latin. “And we heard the name ‘Robert’ but we were not sure which Robert…There was a lot of noise,” he said. “And we kept listening and it became clear that our former graduate is now the head of the Roman Catholic Church.”
The school immediately posted Leo’s photo on its website, and canceled activities for the rest of the day to handle the crush of media calls, he said. Publications around the world explored every aspect of the new pope’s life, even his tennis game. Mayor Brandon Johnson posted on X: “Everything dope, including the Pope, comes from Chicago!”
John Prevost, one of the pope’s two older brothers, told Chicago’s WGN-TV that mothers in their childhood neighborhood had predicted Leo’s future as the first American pope when he was in kindergarten or first grade.
“Did he want this? Not at all,” Prevost told the station. “It’s heavy on your shoulders and I think being the first one from North America, being the first American, people are going to be watching.”
Indeed, when the excitement fades, American Catholics will be watching closely to determine where the new pope stands in regards to their own widening divide . Pope Francis strived to modernize the church by showing greater compassion to marginalized groups, particularly gay people.
But his shift provoked a fierce reaction from a resurgent group of conservative Catholics, who have provided a fresh vitality to the church and are demanding a return to orthodoxy and tradition.
An early signal may be his stance on the traditional Latin mass. Francis discouraged it in favor of a service delivered in local languages, which he deemed more relatable and inviting to churchgoers. Yet the Latin mass is now being revived by many conservative congregations.
Tom Pauken, a member of former President Ronald Reagan’s administration who is active in church affairs, said he hopes Pope Leo gives dioceses more freedom to offer the traditional Latin mass, rather than continue Francis’ “extreme purge” of the service. “A signal like that would make a world of difference in terms of reuniting the faithful,” said Pauken, who lives near Corpus Christi, Texas.
He also urged Leo to pick more orthodox bishops and cardinals and repair relations with prominent U.S. conservatives like Vance. “I just hope he turns out to be a centrist and not continue the road that Pope Francis had us on,” Pauken said.
Meanwhile, many progressive Catholics were wondering how hard the new pope would fight to defend his predecessor’s legacy. In a statement on Thursday, DignityUSA, a lay movement for gay Catholics, expressed concern about comments Prevost reportedly made in 2012 casting aspersions on “the homosexual lifestyle.”
The group noted those remarks were made under a different papacy, and added: “We pray that Pope Leo XIV will demonstrate a willingness to listen and grow as he begins his new role as the leader of the global Church.”
Back in Dolton, though, there was only wonder on Thursday afternoon as neighbors on the quiet Chicago area street of compact, single-family brick homes where the new pope grew up said they were surprised and amazed to learn that he had lived there.
“I just think it’s crazy that the world is so small and somebody so big lived in front of us,” said Jasmine Ramirez, 23, a dental assistant whose family has lived for six years across from the pope’s boyhood home. She and other neighbors said the home had been vacant for a few years but had recently been fixed up and put on the market.
George Arroyo, a 36-year-old truck driver, said some house showings occurred about 20 minutes before media members arrived.
The seller has been asking less than $200,000, he said adding, “It’s gonna be worth some money now.”
Write to Joshua Chaffin at joshua.chaffin@wsj.com , Jeanne Whalen at Jeanne.Whalen@wsj.com , Joe Barrett at Joseph.Barrett@wsj.com and John McCormick at mccormick.john@wsj.com
