(OSV News) -- Standing on loggia of St. Peter's basilica, newly elected Pope Leo XIV smiled, waved and appeared to hold back emotion May 8 as he introduced himself to the world as the 266th successor to St. Peter -- the first American to hold that role.
His first words: "Peace be with you!"
Pope Leo, 69, formerly Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, is the first pope from the United States. He assumes the chair of Peter with multifaceted leadership experience: He grew up in the Midwest, graduated from Augustinian-run Villanova University in 1977 with a math degree, ministered as a bishop in Peru, and led the Vatican dicastery that helps appoint, form and retire bishops.
Born in Chicago and ordained a priest for the Order of St. Augustine in 1982, Pope Leo held major leadership roles in his religious community before being ordained a bishop in 2014, ministering in the dioceses of Chiclayo and Callao, Peru. He was installed as the prefect of the Holy See's Dicastery for Bishops -- the powerful Vatican body responsible for choosing bishops throughout the world -- in April 2023 and was elevated that September to the rank of cardinal.
In 2013, as he prepared to leave his role as the Augustinians' global leader, he told Rome Reports that Augustinians "are called to live a simple life at the service of others, and in a special way, to reach out to those who are poor ... which includes, of course those who are monetarily poor, but there are many kinds of poverty in today's world."
Pope Leo was born in suburban south Chicago on Sept. 14, 1955. His family attended St. Mary of the Assumption Parish in Dolton, Illinois, and he is reportedly of Italian, French and Spanish descent. In 1977, Pope Leo entered the novitiate of the Order of St. Augustine in St. Louis. In September 1978, at the age of 22, he professed first vows, and three years later, he made solemn vows.
He earned a theology degree at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago before going to Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, also known as the Angelicum, receiving his licentiate in 1984. Three years later, he completed his doctorate, writing on "The role of the local prior in the Order of Saint Augustine."
By the time he received his doctorate, he had been ordained a priest for the Order of St. Augustine for five years and had ministered for a year in the order's mission of Chulucanas in Piura, Peru.
In 1987, he was elected the vocations director and missions director for his order's Midwest province, Our Mother of Good Counsel. A year later, he went to Trujillo, Peru, to direct a joint formation project for the region's Augustinian aspirants. Over the course of a decade in Trujillo, he served as the community's prior, formation director and as a teacher. Meanwhile, he served the Archdiocese of Trujillo for nine years as its vicar general and was also a professor of canon, patristic and moral law in the San Carlos e San Marcelo Major Seminary, which is currently celebrating its 400th anniversary.
In 1999, Pope Leo returned to the U.S. to serve as prior provincial for the Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel. In 2001, at age 46, he was promoted to his order's prior general, considered its supreme authority that oversees its administration and governance.
Pope Leo was reelected to the role in 2007, holding it for a total of 12 years until 2013. Under his leadership, the Augustinian provinces in North America reorganized in 2012 as the Federation of the Augustinians of North America, which fostered greater collaboration while allowing each province some autonomy.
For a year, from October 2013 to November 2014, he served as a "teacher of the professed" and provincial vicar.
In November 2014, Pope Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru -- an area in the northwestern part of the country that was then home to around 1.1 million Catholics, about 88% of the population at the time. He was simultaneously named a bishop, but of the titular diocese Sufar, under which title he was ordained a month later on Dec. 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The following year, on Nov. 7, 2015, he was appointed bishop of Chiclayo. He also served for a year, from April 2020 to May 2021, as the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Callao, Peru, whose see city is nearly 500 miles south of Chiclayo along the Peruvian coast.
In 2019, Pope Francis appointed him a member of the Congregation for the Clergy. A year later, he became a member of the Congregation for Bishops.
In January 2023, Pope Leo was appointed to lead the Vatican's Dicastery of Bishops, replacing the Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, and given the personal title of archbishop. Pope Francis elevated him to a cardinal in September 2023, making him cardinal-deacon of Santa Monica of the Augustinians, a church immediately south of the Vatican dedicated to St. Monica, St. Augustine's mother. He was the first -- and so far only -- cardinal named to that church.
Speaking to The Associated Press after being made a cardinal in 2023, Pope Leo XIV said, "I think that it's not coincidental that Pope Francis chose me. I've been a missionary my whole life, and I was working in Peru, but I am American, and I think I do have some insights into the church in the United States."
He continued: "So, the need to be able to advise, work with Pope Francis and to look at the challenges that the church in the United States is facing, I hope to be able to respond to them with healthy dialogue, as we've already begun, with all the bishops in the United States, and to continue to look for ways to be church in the day and age that we're living."
In 2023, Pope Francis also named then-Cardinal Prevost president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, which studies and assists the church in Latin America.
Pope Leo's name is an apparent tribute to Pope Leo XIII, known as the father of Catholic social doctrine, who wrote the groundbreaking 1891 social encyclical "Rerum Novarum," also known as "On the Condition of the Working Classes," that responded to the state of industrial society at the time. With the third-longest recorded papacy (with St. John Paul II holding spot No. 2), Pope Leo XIII led the church from 1878 until his death in 1903.
Despite connecting himself to a pope who reigned more than 120 years ago, Pope Leo XIV appears to be a thoroughly modern prelate who keeps tabs on current events in Rome, Latin America and the U.S. Under "Robert Prevost," Leo XIV has maintained an X account with sporadic, mostly news-based retweets, such as requests in February to pray for Pope Francis and rebukes of Vice President JD Vance's comments on the ordering one's loves, or "ordo amoris," a Catholic concept Vance tried to invoke to justify Trump's immigration policy.
Pope Leo XVI reportedly enjoys watching tennis; speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese; and reads Latin and German. According to a May 8 interview with his brother John Prevost, Pope Leo is a Chicago White Sox fan -- and never cheered for baseball rival Chicago Cubs. "He was never, ever a Cubs fan," the pope's brother emphasized.
At age 69, Pope Leo is seven years younger than Pope Francis was when he was elected in 2013, and nine years younger than Benedict XVI when he was elected in 2005. He is 11 years older than St. John Paul II, who was 58, at his 1978 election.
Pope Leo was likely elected on the third vote of the conclave's second day, after a total of four votes. The 133 cardinal electors entered the conclave on the afternoon of May 7, with the closing of the doors of the Sistine Chapel broadcast live by Vatican Media.
The conclave was the largest and most geographically diverse conclave known in history, with cardinals representing 69 countries across five countries, with greater percentages of participating cardinals from Africa, Asia and Latin America than in other recent conclaves. By contrast, 115 cardinal electors -- half of them from Europe -- participated in the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis. In the 2025 conclave, 43% of electors were from Europe.
Prior to the conclave, the cardinal electors met for 12 general congregations, during which they shared their hopes, concerns and priorities for the church. The topics highlighted ranged widely, from evangelization, caring for the poor and addressing clergy sexual abuse, to the economy, peace-building efforts and synodality.
Many of the world's 252 cardinals -- including those over age 80 who were no longer eligible to elect a pope -- were already in or arrived in Rome within days of Pope Francis' death April 21. More than 220 cardinals, including then-Cardinal Prevost, attended his funeral on April 26.
Pope Leo has been commended for his interpersonal skills, with veteran American Vatican journalist John Allen Jr. of Crux describing him as "a moderate, balanced figure, known for solid judgment and a keen capacity to listen."
Pope Leo has also drawn criticism for his alleged role in the permissions given in 2000 for a priest of the Chicago Archdiocese, who had been credibly accused of multiple cases of child abuse, to live in an Augustinian friary less than a block from a school without informing the school.
While that situation occurred before the 2002 Dallas Charter, within which the U.S. bishops established procedures for addressing clergy sexual abuse, then-Bishop Prevost has also been accused of not fully investigating three sisters' sexual abuse allegations, made in 2022, against two priests in the Diocese of Chiclayo -- a charge the diocese has denied.
The case has drawn global attention because as head of the Dicastery for Bishops, then-Cardinal Prevost oversaw cases of clergy negligence under the worldwide norms Pope Francis established in 2019 with "Vos Estis Lux Mundi."
As a dicastery head, then-Cardinal Prevost participated in both sessions of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Synodality that Pope Francis led in 2023 and 2024.
In remarks given from St. Peter's loggia before offering his first "urbi et orbi" blessing, Pope Leo commended Pope Francis' final blessing of the world on Easter morning, the day before he died, saying, "Let me follow up on that same blessing: God loves us, God loves you all, and evil will not prevail! We are all in God's hands. Therefore, without fear, united hand in hand with God and each other -- let us go forward. We are disciples of Christ. Christ goes before us."
Pope Leo also indicated he would continue the legacy of Pope Francis in developing a synodal style within the Catholic Church for the sake of its Gospel mission.
"We want to be a synodal church," he said. "A church that walks, a church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close especially to those who suffer."
The Augustinians' Philadelphia-based Province of St. Thomas of Villanova announced earlier this year that it was presenting its 2025 St. Augustine Medal to then-Cardinal Prevost, with a celebration scheduled for Aug. 28, the feast of St. Augustine.
In that 2013 Rome Reports interview, then-Father Prevost spoke about God and St. Augustine, the fifth-century philosopher, theologian and bishop who inspired the formation of the Augustinians in 1244.
"God is not someone or something that is absent and far away," he said. "And Augustine, in his spirituality, in his struggles, in his reflections that we see, for example, in the 'Confessions,' is able to open a window ... and to lead others to come to discover how God is working in their lives."
