By Simone Orendain, OSV News
CHICAGO – The first commissioned bust of Pope Leo XIV by famed Catholic sculptor Timothy Schmalz was installed in Chicago Feb. 22 at Catholic Theological Union, the graduate theology school where the Pope is an alumnus. The bust is one of only three Pope Leo sculptures by Schmalz, so far. They are all located in the Americas.
At the Mass at CTU, right before the bronze head and chest of Pope Leo with St. Augustine carved underneath his right shoulder was unveiled, Augustinian Father John Lydon referred to the significance of the sculpture in his homily about Jesus Christ’s three temptations in the desert.
He said, “It is a bust of our present Pope, and like his predecessors, we believe he is in that role by the providence of God. And knowing that God is there through it all hopefully calls us forth – as it did to that Augustinian, now Pope, in the 1990s, in the face of evil, to do as Jesus did in the Gospel today, to say, ‘Enough. Go.'”
Father Lydon lived with Pope Leo – who graduated from CTU in 1982, the year he was ordained to the priesthood, with a Master in Divinity – for a decade in Trujillo, Peru’s third largest city on its northern coast. He referred to the challenges he and the Pope, then-Father Robert F. Prevost, faced living in a dangerous time for religious missionaries.
He said they had been targeted by a local terrorist group. Although their superiors had originally told them to plan for departure, Father Prevost along with his companions said they would remain with the faithful.
Father Lyndon also described how the parishes where they served got involved in protesting the government’s dictatorship and its human rights abuses with a petition campaign. He said Father Prevost collected the most signatures to give to civil authorities of the country’s institutions that spoke up against the government.
He told those gathered in his homily the one thing he now wanted them to recall as they pass by the bust of that same Augustinian priest and alumnus who is now Pope: “To be at the side of the crucified today, to be at the foot of the cross and to know that there resides the real power of life, liberty and happiness is the reason for our hope. May that be our feeling as we pass each day that bust.”
Regarding the sculpture’s origins, Schmalz told OSV News that CTU bought “the first bronze cast of the piece I created.”
Tom Brown, chair of CTU’s board of trustees, told OSV News he and other school donors agreed to commission – for an undisclosed amount – one bust for the school and another for the Augustinian formation house in Trujillo, Peru, where the Pope once lived and worked. Altogether, Pope Leo served in Peru for about 20 years.
Schmalz said within the week of Pope Leo’s election May 8, 2025, he completed the smiling clay sculpture that would go through the months-long process of being cast in bronze.
“There is this spontaneous joy that’s embedded within the piece,” Schmalz said. “It was hard to calculate how that sculpture would come about, but it just captured at that moment, some sort of hope and joy within the expression that he holds, which I absolutely love.”
The Toronto-area sculptor said a week before Pope Francis passed away, he had just installed “Be Welcoming,” a sculpture based on Hebrews 13:2, at St. Peter’s Square. He said the news of the former Pope’s death April 21 “came as a shock”; but then the rapid selection of a new Pope by May 8 “was a delight in a sense,” because the cardinals “were inspired to have that intuition very quickly.”
“That’s how I, in a sense, celebrated this new Pope,” Schmalz said.
He shared that the Vatican acquired the third sculpture and, in January, placed it in the apostolic nunciature in Washington among papal portraits from throughout the ages.
Simone Orendain is an OSV News correspondent and writes from Chicago.