White smoke billowing from the Sistine Chapel chimney on Thursday signalled the dawn of a new era in the Catholic Church.
Taking the name Pope Leo the X1V, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost plans to continue the legacy of Pope Leo XIII who had the rights and welfare of workers close to his heart.
Pope Leo XIII wrote the encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 outlining the rights of workers to a fair wage, safe working conditions, and the formation of trade unions, while affirming the rights to property and free enterprise opposing socialism and laissez-faire capitalism.
He is well-known for his intellectualism and his attempts to define the position of the Catholic Church with regard to modern thinking.
With the encyclical, Pope Leo the 13th became popularly titled as the “Social Pope” and the “Pope of the Workers”, also having created the foundations for modern thinking in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church influencing the thoughts of his successors.
Pope Leo XIII is particularly remembered for his belief that pastoral activity in political sociology was also a vital mission of the church as a vehicle of social justice and maintaining the rights and dignities of the human person. Leo XIII issued a record of eleven papal encyclicals on the rosary, earning him the title of the “Rosary Pope”.
Pope Leo the 14th succeeds Pope Francis as the 267th Pope following the death of Pope Francis on April 21.
The first words of the new pontiff were ‘Peace be with you’ expressed from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday, in his first public speech. Prior to his election as Pope Leo XIV, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.
Second Pope from the Americas
The first Augustinian Pope, Leo XIV is the second Roman Pontiff – after Pope Francis – from the Americas. Unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio, however, the 69-year-old Robert Francis Prevost is from the Northern part of the continent, though he spent many years as a missionary in Peru before being elected head of the Augustinians for two consecutive terms.
He was born on September 14, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois, to Louis Marius Prevost, of French and Italian descent, and Mildred Martínez, of Spanish descent. He has two brothers, Louis Martín and John Joseph. He spent his childhood and adolescence with his family and studied first at the Minor Seminary of the Augustinian Fathers and then at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where in 1977 he earned a Degree in Mathematics and also studied Philosophy.
In Rome, he was ordained a priest on June 19, 1982, at the Augustinian College of Saint Monica by Archbishop Jean Jadot, then pro-president of the Secretariat for Non-Christians, which later became the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and then the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue.
Prevost obtained his licentiate in 1984 and the following year, while preparing his doctoral thesis, was sent to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Piura, Peru (1985–1986).
The following year, he joined the mission in Trujillo, also in Peru, as director of the joint formation project for Augustinian candidates from the vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos, and Apurímac.
Over the course of eleven years, he served as prior of the community (1988–1992), formation director (1988–1998), and instructor for professed members (1992–1998), and in the Archdiocese of Trujillo as judicial vicar (1989–1998) and Professor of Canon Law, Patristics, and Moral Theology at the Major Seminary “San Carlos San Marcelo.”
At the same time, he was also entrusted with the pastoral care of Our Lady Mother of the Church, later established as the parish of Saint Rita (1988–1999), in a poor suburb of the city, and was parish administrator of Our Lady of Monserrat from 1992 to 1999.
Appointed Cardinal
Pope Francis appointed him Cardinal in the Consistory of September 30, 2023 and assigned him the Diaconate of Saint Monica. He officially took possession of it on January 28, 2024.
As head of the Dicastery, he participated in the Pope’s most recent Apostolic Journeys and in the first and second sessions of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on synodality, held in Rome from October 4 to 29, 2023, and from October 2 to 27, 2024.
On October 4, 2023, Pope Francis appointed him as a member of the Dicasteries for Evangelisation (Section for First Evangelisation and New Particular Churches), for the Doctrine of the Faith, for the Eastern Churches, for the Clergy, for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, for Culture and Education, for Legislative Texts, and of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican City State.
Finally, on February 6 of this year, the Argentine Pope promoted him to the Order of Bishops, granting him the title of the Suburbicarian Church of Albano.
