Robert Prevost, the selection of the world’s Catholic cardinals to function chief of the 1.4-billion-member Church, is the first pope from the United States and a relative unknown on the worldwide stage.
Aged 69 and initially from Chicago, Prevost has spent most of his profession as a missionary in Peru and have become a cardinal solely in 2023. He has given few media interviews.
He takes the papal identify Leo XIV, and succeeds Pope Francis, who had led the Church since 2013.

Rev. Mark Francis, a good friend of Prevost for the reason that Seventies, instructed Reuters the cardinal was a agency supporter of his predecessor’s papacy, and particularly of the late pontiff’s dedication to social justice points.
“He was at all times pleasant and heat and remained a voice of widespread sense and sensible considerations for the Church’s outreach to the poor,” stated Francis, who attended seminary with Prevost and later knew him after they each lived in Rome within the 2000s.
“He has a wry humorousness, however was not somebody who sought the limelight,” stated Francis, who leads the U.S. province of the Viatorian non secular order.
Prevost first served as a bishop in Chiclayo, in northwestern Peru, from 2015 to 2023, and have become a Peruvian citizen in 2015, so he has twin nationalities.

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Pope Francis introduced him to Rome that yr to move the Vatican workplace accountable for selecting which monks ought to function Catholic bishops throughout the globe, that means he has had a hand in choosing most of the world’s bishops.
FILE – New Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, stands for a portrait on the finish of the consistory the place Pope Francis elevated 21 new cardinals in St. Peter’s Sq. on the Vatican, Sept. 30, 2023. (AP Photograph/Riccardo De Luca, File).
Jesus Leon Angeles, coordinator of a Catholic group in Chiclayo who has recognized Prevost since 2018, referred to as him a “quite simple” one that would exit of his method to assist others.
Leon Angeles stated Prevost had proven particular concern for Venezuelan migrants in Peru, saying: “He’s an individual who likes to assist.” Greater than 1.5 million Venezuelans have moved to Peru in recent times, partly to flee their nation’s financial disaster.
In a 2023 interview with the Vatican’s information outlet, Prevost targeted on the significance of evangelization to assist the Church develop.
“We are sometimes preoccupied with educating doctrine … however we threat forgetting that our first process is to show what it means to know Jesus Christ,” he stated.
Prevost stated throughout a 2023 Vatican press convention: “Our work is to enlarge the tent and to let everybody know they’re welcome contained in the Church.”
Prevost was born in 1955 and is a member of the worldwide Augustinian non secular order, which incorporates about 2,500 monks and brothers, operates in 50 international locations and has a particular deal with a lifetime of group and equality amongst its members.
He has a bachelor’s diploma from Villanova College in Philadelphia, a grasp’s from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and a doctorate in Church regulation from the Pontifical Faculty of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.
Prevost first went to Peru as a missionary in 1985, returning to the USA in 1999 to take up a management function in his non secular order.

He later moved to Rome to serve two six-year phrases as head of the Augustinians, visiting most of the order’s communities internationally. He’s recognized to talk English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese.
Returning to Rome in 2023, Prevost usually didn’t participate in most of the social occasions that appeal to Vatican officers all through town.
Leon Angeles stated he’s an individual with management abilities, “however on the similar time, he is aware of pay attention. He has that advantage.”
“The cardinal has the courtesy to ask for an opinion, even when it’s from the best or most humble particular person,” she stated. “He is aware of hearken to everybody.”
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