OSV News – Pope Leo XIV turns 70 Sept. 14, four months after being elected to the chair of St. Peter. Here is a look at his first seven decades, which include a wide range of education, ministerial and leadership experiences.
PHOTO GALLLERY: Pope Leo XIV at 70
– 1955-1964
This photo shows the second-grade class of Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, at St. Mary of the Assumption School in Riverdale, Ill., in 1962. He is the fourth boy standing next to the blackboard. The Sisters of Christian Charity taught the future pope at the school. (OSV News photo/courtesy Province of the Sisters of Christian Charity in Mendham, N.J.)
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Robert F. Prevost was born Sept. 14, 1955, at Mercy Hospital on Chicago’s South Side to Louis and Mildred Prevost, an educator and librarian. He grew up with two older brothers, Louis and John, in the Chicago suburb of Dolton. He attended the nearby St. Mary of the Assumption Parish and School, where Mildred was active in several groups and acted in parish plays.
Beginning around age 6, he served at 6:30 a.m. weekday Mass before school. His brother John recalls young Robert playing Mass on his mother’s ironing board, using Necco wafers to imitate Communion.
– 1965-1974
The older Prevost brothers attended Mendel Catholic High School in Chicago, which was run by the Augustinian order (and where his mother worked). Robert, however, had expressed interest in the priesthood and went to St. Augustine Seminary High School, a small Augustinian boarding school for boys near Holland, Michigan.
There, “Bob” was yearbook editor, student council vice president and the 1973 senior class president, and was known as a standout student and able tutor in several subjects.
After graduation, he moved to Philadelphia to attend Villanova University, also run by the Augustinians, where he studied philosophy and mathematics and was active in the burgeoning pro-life movement.
– 1975-1984
Robert F. Prevost, the future Pope Leo XIV, during his senior year at Villanova University in Villanova, Pa., is pictured in this undated photo. (OSV News photo/courtesy of Villanova University)
In 1977, Prevost graduated from Villanova with a math degree and entered the Augustinian order, attending the Augustinians’ Midwest Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel novitiate in St. Louis. He made his first profession of vows in 1978 and his solemn vows in 1981. In 1982, he earned a master of divinity degree from Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and was then ordained a priest June 19 at the Augustinian College of St. Monica in Rome. He remained in Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (also known as the Angelicum), earning his licentiate in 1984.
– 1985-1994
In 1985, then-Father Prevost was working on his doctorate in canon law and was sent to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Peru, where he ministered for a year. In 1987, he completed his doctorate with the thesis “The Role of the Local Prior in the Order of St. Augustine.” That year he was appointed the Midwest Augustinians’ vocations director and missions director, and based in suburban Chicago.
The following year, in 1988, he moved 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 (1988-1992), formation director (1988-1998) and as an instructor (1992-1998).
– 1995-2004
As then-Father Prevost turned 40, he continued to serve in various roles in Trujillo, including as the archdiocese’s judicial vicar in its tribunal, and as a professor of canon, patristic and moral law in the San Carlos e San Marcelo Major Seminary. In 1999, he returned to Chicago after being elected prior provincial for the Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel.
He held that leadership role for only two years, however, before being elected in 2001 as the order’s prior general, entrusted with overseeing the administration and governance of Augustinians worldwide. While the role was based in Rome, it involved traveling the globe to visit Augustinian communities.
– 2005-2014
Then-Father Robert F. Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, is seen in a video interview with Catholic News Service Oct. 29, 2012, at the Augustinianum Institute for Patristic Studies in Rome. (CNS photo/screengrab from CNS video)
Catholic News Service
Then-Father Prevost’s sixth decade began in Italy and ended in Peru. He continued as prior provincial through 2013, having been reelected in 2007. After his second term in Rome, he returned to Chicago in 2013 to direct Augustinian formation and serve as provincial vicar. In November 2014, Pope Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru. 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.
– 2015-2025
In September 2015, Bishop Prevost was named bishop of Chiclayo. While holding that role, he served in leadership of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference (2018-2023) and was a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, beginning in 2019. From 2020-2021, he took on the additional role of apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Callao, Peru. He also served on the Holy See’s Congregation for Bishops. He was known for being accessible, a source of unity and caring for the poor.
In 2023, he was appointed prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, named president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and granted the title of archbishop Jan. 30, requiring relocation to Rome. On Sept. 30, 2023, he was elevated to the College of Cardinals. Nearly two years later, on May 8, 2025, he was elected Pope, taking the name Leo XIV – a nod, he said, to Pope Leo XIII and his leadership during a changing age.
Maria Wiering is senior writer for OSV News.
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