Habemus Papam!
The bells of St. Peter’s rang out across the twilit Roman sky just after 7PM on May 8th, 2025, heralding the news that Catholics around the world had been waiting for: the church had a new leader, and the flock had found its next shepherd. The mysterious and secretive rituals of conclave were at an end.
After little more than a day’s deliberations and just 4 rounds of voting beneath Michelangelo’s iconic frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, consensus suddenly coalesced around an unexpected name. Black smoke had already vanquished the chances of early frontrunners Luis Tagle and Pietro Parolin, and when white clouds finally billowed from the chapel’s famous chimney it was to mark the election of Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost from Chicago: henceforth known to all as Pope Leo XIV.
At 69, his rise from Windy City altar boy to the apex of the Catholic hierarchy is remarkable; but the questions he leaves open – about continuity, change, and the path forward for the church in some of the most uncertain times the world has seen since the height of the Cold War are just as fascinating. And then, of course, the most burning issue of all: will the Pope finally convert Italians to deep-dish pizza?
Now, with the world watching, the story of our new pontiff unfolds…
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When Prevost stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to address the waiting crowds, he made history as the Church’s first leader born in the United States. Born September 14, 1955 into a tightly knit, immigrant-rich neighborhood in South Chicago, Prevost himself comes from a mixed background: his father, of French-Italian descent, was a school superintendent, while his mother, of Spanish heritage, was a librarian highly active in the local church.
While the future pope was religious from an early age, he was more than just a holy Joe. Following in the footsteps of sports-mad pontiffs like John Paul II, who was an avid soccer fan and player in his youth, Prevost loves tennis, describing himself as ‘quite the amateur player.’ Speaking of sports, today his brother settled another burning question: despite the Chicago Cubs trying to claim him at Wrigley field last night, it turns out that when it comes to baseball, the Prevost boys are all about the White Sox – a loyalty forged in their boyhood days when they got to go to games for free when serving as altar boys in Dolton.
Academically, Pope Leo’s qualifications extend beyond the theological as well – after studying at the Minor Seminary of the Augustinian Fathers, Prevost headed to Villanova University where he gained a degree in Mathematics as well as studying philosophy.
By this time his sense of calling had become more acute: according to the Vatican, shortly after graduating he headed down to St Louis where he entered the novitiate of the Order of Saint Augustine on September 2, 1978. Five years later he earned a master’s of divinity degree from the Catholic Theological Union back in the Windy city.
His intellectual gifts shone early: a deep knowledge of the Patristics, moral theology, and canon law drew him to Rome for licentiate studies at the Angelicum in 1982, culminating in a doctorate on the role of the local prior within the Augustinian family. While in the Eternal City he was formally ordained as a priest at the Augustinian College of Saint Monica.
It was the future Pope Leo XIV’s decade in Peru while undertaking missionary work there in the 1980s and 1990s that arguably shaped his vision of service in the church the most. In Chulucanas and then Trujillo he served as community prior and seminary professor, immersed in the lives of migrants, miners, and the forgotten poor in a region often marked by poverty and stricken by natural disasters.
Prevost’s hands-on style and fluency in Spanish made him wildly popular in Peru: locals recount how he waded through rivers of mud to help communities devastated by floods, and personally delievered provisions to remote villages in the Andes in his pickup truck. In the wake of his election online commentators from the country have joked that he is “more Latino than the entire cast of Emilia Pérez.”
Later he said that his time in South America solidified his conviction that “a bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom, but rather called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them and to suffer with them” – a position that aligned him very closely with the ideals of the future Pope Francis.
It was in Peru too that Prevost developed an acute environmental sensitivity: witnessing water-scarce fields, eroded hillsides and towns stricken by torrential rains all informed his belief that the church has an obligation to take climate change seriously and act as a responsible custodian of the earth, again harmonizing with the message of Francis’s later Laudato Si’ encyclical.
ack in Chicago, Prevost’s steady leadership and reputation as an honest broker won him election as provincial prior of the Augustinian Province of “Mother of Good Counsel” in 1999. Two years later his ecclesiastical career took another giant leap forward when he became prior general of the Augustinian order worldwide.
In 2014 he was elevated to the rank of bishop by Pope Francis, going on to serve as the bishop of Chiclayo back in Peru until 2023, where he now holds citizenship. In a sign of their increasing closeness, Pope Francis then tapped Prevost to head the newly merged Dicastery for Bishops and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America – an appointment that effectively made him the Church’s global human-resources director.
Tasked with vetting episcopal candidates worldwide, Prevost’s skills as a communicator with plenty of diplomatic tact came to the fore, something that undoubtedly helped his chances during the recently concluded conclave. In 2024, he was finally appointed Cardinal.
The Papal conclave of 2025 was widely viewed by observers as a battle for the church’s soul between two opposing factions: the liberal, reforming group of cardinals keen to continue Pope Francis’s legacy of social justice, inclusivity and environmental responsibility and a traditional wing that yearned instead for a return to a more conservative church focused on questions of doctrine and traditional values.
While Prevost was certainly close to Francis and more aligned with the liberal cardinals, he will probably be seen as something of a compromise choice, adept at navigating the opposing positions of the two camps. His time and actions in Peru have ensured his bona fides as a champion of social justice and advocate of the environment, while his tenure as Prefect of Bishops demonstrated a respect for ecclesial structures that conservatives find comforting.
On hot-button issues, Prevost’s record shows both alignment and potential distinction from his predecessor. He has publicly championed migrant outreach, and branded the Trump administration’s hostile policies on migrants and plans for mass deportations from the United States a ‘disgrace.’ Earlier this year he also issued a rebuke to Vice President JD Vance’s assertion that Christianity teaches a priority for tribal groupings over a love for humanity as a whole.
The new pope has sounded a less enthusiastic note than Francis on LGBTQ+ blessings, however: past criticisms of non-traditional relationships and family units have sparked some concern in the gay community, although LGBTQ+-friendly sources in the church suggest that the pope’s views have grown closer to his predecessor’s on that subject.
Prevost has become the 14th pontiff to take the name Leo. Generally popes have good reasons for choosing their papal monikers (Francis chose his name in honor of his hero Francis of Assisi), and church historians believe that this time is no exception. The First Pope to take the name, Leo the Great, was known as a champion of peace and famously persuaded Attila the Hun not to ransack Rome in 452 AD. Not coincidentally, Leo XIV used the word ‘peace’ no fewer than 9 times in his first address from the balcony at St. Peter’s.
The most recent pope before Prevost to take the name was Leo XIII, who rose to the papal throne in 1878. And here too there might be some clues. Leo XIII was a dedicated social reformer who enshrined the rights of workers as a key tenet of the Catholic church’s social vision at a time when exploitation and brutal working conditions were rife in the rapidly industrializing world. In fact, today the Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed that the new pope was inspired to take his name thanks to Leo XIII’s groundbreaking encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.”
In a world where the gap between the richest and the poorest is arguably widening at a rate faster than any time since Leo XIII sounded one of the first modern calls for workers’ rights, Pope Leo XIV may yet emerge as our new “workers’ pope” – a pope forged in the immigrant neighborhoods of south Chicago and the soil of Peru’s poorest parishes.
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