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LEOPOPE
Person

Robert Francis Prevost

Also known as: Pope Leo XIV, Robert Prevost, Padre Roberto, León XIV

Summary
Robert Francis Prevost is the birth name of Pope Leo XIV, elected the 267th pope on 8 May 2025 — the first pope born in the United States. Born in Chicago in 1955, he is a member of the Order of Saint Augustine who spent much of his life in Peru as a missionary, seminary teacher and Bishop of Chiclayo, and who served as Prefect of the Vatican's Dicastery for Bishops from 2023 until his election.

Roles

  • Augustinian missionary, Chulucanas, Peru1985–1986
  • Formator, canon lawyer and judicial vicar, Trujillo, Peru1988–1998
  • Prior Provincial, Augustinian Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel (Chicago)1999–2001
  • Prior General, Order of Saint Augustine2001–2013
  • Apostolic Administrator, then Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru2014–2023
  • Prefect, Dicastery for Bishops; President, Pontifical Commission for Latin America2023–2025
  • Cardinal2023–2025
  • Pope2025–present

Key facts

Full name
Robert Francis Prevost
Religious order
Order of Saint Augustine (O.S.A.)
Ordained priest
19 June 1982, Rome
Created cardinal
30 September 2023, by Pope Francis
Elected pope
8 May 2025 (fourth ballot)
Papal motto
In Illo uno unum ('In the One, we are one'), from St Augustine
Languages
English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese; reads Latin and German

Prevost earned a mathematics degree from Villanova University in 1977, entered the Augustinians the same year, and was ordained a priest in 1982. He completed a licentiate and doctorate in canon law at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome.

Sent to Peru in 1985, he worked in the mission of Chulucanas and then for a decade in Trujillo as a seminary formator, canon-law professor and diocesan official. He led the worldwide Augustinian order as Prior General from 2001 to 2013, then returned to Peru as Bishop of Chiclayo from 2015, taking Peruvian citizenship. Pope Francis brought him to Rome in 2023 to head the Dicastery for Bishops and made him a cardinal.

Elected pope on 8 May 2025, he took the name Leo XIV, linking it to Leo XIII and Catholic social teaching in an age of artificial intelligence. His inauguration Mass was on 18 May 2025.

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