Chicago-born Cardinal Prevost — now Pope Leo XIV — graduated from Holland's now-closed St. Augustine Seminary High School
DETROIT — The new Roman pontiff attended high school in western Michigan.
For Catholics from the Great Lakes state, that sentence might take a while to sink in.
As the world learned the identity of the 267th pope and the 266th successor to St. Peter on May 8, few expected to see an American step out onto the loggia above St. Peter's Square. But that's exactly what happened as the former Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, an Augustinian priest born in Chicago who spent much of his ministry in Peru, waved to the world for the first time as Pope Leo XIV.
To see a born-and-raised Midwesterner don the robes of the fisherman is, to put it mildly, a shock.
Although the new pope spent most of his childhood in the greater Chicago area, he attended high school in western Michigan, at the now-closed St. Augustine Seminary High School in Holland, to be exact.
The Chicago Sun Times, in a report May 3, said Pope Leo attended the Augustinian school in the early 1970s as he was discerning the priesthood with the Order of St. Augustine. He was a member of the class of 1973.
A newspaper clipping from the Holland Sentinel from Oct. 7, 1972, shared that Robert Prevost, then a senior at the school, was honored "for his high performance on the 1971 Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test."
The future pope also was "consistently on the Honor Roll" and served as editor-in-chief of the school's yearbook, as vice president of the Student Council, president of the Library Club, and as a senator to the Student Congress in Lansing. He was also president of his senior class and served on the National Honor Society and the school's Mission Club, the newspaper said.
Today, the former school is known as the Felt Estate, a 12,000-foot historic mansion in Laketown Township that, from 1949 to 1977, served as a Catholic prep school run by the Order of St. Augustine. At its peak in the 1960s, the seminary high school enrolled 180 students, most of whom came from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.
Then-Cardinal Prevost spoke about his time in high school in 2024, during an event at St. Jude Church in New Lenox, Ill.
According to one report, the future pope told members of the parish how he was impacted by those at St. Augustine, including one educator who "was a really dedicated teacher and Augustinian,” he said.
Bishop Edward M. Lohse of the Diocese of Kalamazoo, where the former seminary high school was located, joined others in expressing joy and surprise at the new pope's election.
“We pledge our prayers in support of His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, in communion with him and with all who look to the Successor of Saint Peter, the Vicar of Christ, as the visible head of the pilgrim Church on earth," Bishop Lohse said. "Our new Holy Father, the first American to be elected pope, is no stranger to the Diocese of Kalamazoo as he spent his high school years here in minor seminary.”
During a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Detroit Archbishop Edward J. Weisenburger said he was counted among those shocked to see an American pope, something he "never in my lifetime" expected.
“There’s a certain amount of pride we Americans can take in this,” Archbishop Weisenburger said, saying, tongue-in-cheek, that the pope's brief time in Michigan means “we can claim him.”
“I think what we’re going to find with Pope Leo is he’s very much going to be in the image of Christ,” Archbishop Weisenburger added.
Born in Chicago in 1955, Pope Leo XIV entered the novitiate for the Midwest Augustinians in 1977, making his solemn profession in 1981. After his priestly ordination in 1982, Pope Leo spent decades serving the Church as a missionary in Peru, but later returned to become prior provincial of the Chicago-based Midwest Augustinians, and later as prior general of the worldwide order. In 2014, Pope Francis appointed him a bishop, and he was installed as bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, on Sept. 26, 2015.
In a statement released shortly after the news broke, Fr. Anthony B. Pizzo, OSA, the current prior provincial of the Midwest Augustinians, said Pope Leo XIV has served the Church with humility and distinction.
“Pope Leo XIV is a man of deep integrity, a true listener, and a companion to those on the margins of society,” said Fr. Pizzo, who also served as pastor of St. Clare of Montefalco Parish in Grosse Pointe Park in the 1990s. “We see him as a bridge-builder, rooted in the spirit of St. Augustine, walking forward with the whole Church as a companion on the journey. We are honored that he is one of our own, a brother formed in the restless heart of the Augustinian Order.”
