Former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost of the United States was selected Thursday by the papal conclave to succeed Pope Francis and lead the Roman Catholic Church. The new pontiff, who has taken the name Leo XIV, is the first American pope. But what else do we know about him?
Prevost, 69, was born in Chicago on Sept. 14, 1955. His father, Louis Marius Prevost, a school administrator and World War II naval veteran, was of French and Italian descent; his mother, Mildred Martinez, descended from Creole people of color in New Orleans. In addition to English, the new pope speaks Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese; he can read Latin and German.
Prevost is an Augustinian, meaning he belongs to a Catholic order known for its commitment to community and sharing. He is the first Augustinian pope, according to the Vatican.
Pope Leo's rise through the Catholic Church
Prevost attended secondary school at an Augustinian seminary and officially joined the order in 1977, when he was 22. In between, he earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at Villanova University. Five years later, Prevost was awarded a Master of Divinity degree from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and he traveled to the Augustinian College of Saint Monica in Rome to be ordained. Prevost later received a doctorate in canon law from Rome’s Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Prevost went on to spend much of his adult life abroad. While preparing his doctoral thesis, he was sent to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Piura, Peru. He returned to Peru in 1988 and spent the next 10 years leading the Augustinian seminary in Trujillo; he also taught canon law, served as an ecclesiastical judge, and led his own congregation. He eventually became a naturalized citizen there.
From 1999 to 2014, Prevost worked in Chicago, where he first led the city’s Augustinian Province and then served two six-year terms as head of the Augustinians. Like other cardinals, he has been criticized for his dealings there with priests accused of sexual abuse.
Prevost returned to Peru in 2014; Pope Francis soon named him bishop. Until Francis’s death, Prevost “held one of the most influential Vatican posts, running the office that selects and manages bishops globally,” according to the New York Times.
What kind of pope will Leo be?
In his first remarks after being chosen as the new pontiff Thursday, Pope Leo outlined his vision for the Catholic Church.
"We have to seek together to be a missionary church. A church that builds bridges and dialogue," he said, according to an English translation of his remarks, which were mostly in Italian. He also called on people to "show our charity" to others "and be in dialogue with love."
Leo paid tribute to the late Pope Francis as well, saying, "Let us keep in our ears the weak voice of Pope Francis that blesses Rome. The Pope who blessed Rome, gave his blessing to the entire world that morning of Easter. Allow me to follow up on that blessing. God loves us. God loves everyone. Evil will not prevail."
The fact that Leo, like Francis, hails from the Americas — and spent decades in Francis’s native South America — suggests a degree of continuity. The conventional wisdom ahead of this week’s conclave was that an American would not be chosen as pontiff. Does this mean Leo will champion greater inclusion and openness to change, like his predecessor?
The earliest clues suggest he might.
What are Leo's political views?
While “often described as reserved and discreet,” according to the Times — a stylistic departure from the more gregarious Francis — Leo named himself after Pope Leo XIII, a turn-of-the-20th-century modernizer. Leo XIII was known as the “Social Pope” and the "Pope of the Workers” for his writings on social justice, fair wages, safe labor conditions and trade unions.
Along similar lines, Prevost resurfaced on X in February of this year — after a long absence — to repost an opinion column from the National Catholic Reporter about how Vice President “JD Vance is wrong” because “Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.”
The column criticized Vance for interpreting a medieval concept known as ordo amoris to mean that “you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”
“A lot of the far left has completely inverted that,” Vance complained in January.
Yet the column insists that “Jesus never speaks of love as something to be rationed. He speaks of love as abundance — a table where there is enough for everyone.”
This is “what the gospel asks of all of us on immigration,” Prevost wrote on X when he later reposted another story critical of the Trump administration's treatment of migrants.
Most recently, in April, Prevost shared an X postthat questioned the Trump administration's deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
"Do you not see the suffering?" the post read, quoting the story it linked to. "Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?”
Prevost joined X (then Twitter) in 2011. Throughout Trump's first term, he shared tweets
On the other hand, it’s unclear whether Prevost (now Leo) will be as accepting of LGBTQ Catholics as Francis was. In a 2012 address to bishops, he lamented that Western media and culture had fostered “sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel,” citing the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”
Since then, he has been quiet on the subject.
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