Pope Leo XIV[a] (born Robert Francis Prevost,[b][c] September 14, 1955) is 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 from the Order of Saint Augustine, and the second from the Americas (after his predecessor 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. 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.
Made a cardinal by Pope Francis, Prevost emphasized synodality, missionary dialogue, and engagement with social and technological challenges. He also engaged with issues such as climate change, global migration, church governance, and human rights, and expressed alignment with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.
Prevost’s election in the 2025 papal conclave was unexpected by observers; he was a dark horse candidate, with Vatican insiders believing that a pope would never emerge from the United States while a superpower.[8][9] He took his papal name in honor of Pope Leo XIII, who developed modern Catholic social teaching amid the Second Industrial Revolution.
