PERSON: Robert Francis Prevos / Pope Leo XIV

Vatican City State

Pope

Pope Leo XIV (born Robert Francis Prevost, September 14, 1955) is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State. He is the first pope to have been born in the United States and North America, the first to hold American and Peruvian citizenships, the first born after World War II, the first from the Order of Saint Augustine, and the second from the Americas after his predecessor Pope Francis.

Prevost was born in Chicago and raised in the nearby suburb of Dolton, Illinois. He became a friar of the Order of Saint Augustine in 1977 and was ordained as a priest in 1982. He earned a Doctor of Canon Law (JCD) degree in 1987, from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome. His service includes extensive missionary work in Peru in the 1980s and 1990s, where he worked as a parish pastor, diocesan official, seminary teacher, and administrator. Elected prior general of the Order of Saint Augustine, he was based in Rome from 2001 to 2013, and extensively traveled to the order’s provinces around the world. He then returned to Peru as Bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023. In 2023, Pope Francis appointed him prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Rome, and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

Prevost’s election in the 2025 conclave was unexpected by observers; he was a dark horse candidate, with Vatican insiders believing the prospect of a pope from the United States to be unrealistic so long as the country has the status of a superpower. In honor of Pope Leo XIII, who developed modern Catholic social teaching amid the Second Industrial Revolution, Prevost chose the papal name Leo XIV as a response to the challenges of a new industrial revolution and artificial intelligence.

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