Cardinal Robert Prevost – a Chicago native who spent his career ministering to the poor in Peru – has been elected the 267 ^th pope, marking the first American pontiff in the Catholic Church’s 2,000 year history.

The 69-year-old appeared to the world as Pope Leo XIV for the first time Thursday evening after the historic conclave concluded in Vatican City, where he waved to the crowds filling St. Peter’s Square with cheering, chants and tears.

It was a striking moment in a lifetime of Christian service that’s brought Prevost far from his hometown on the South Side of Chicago to far-flung corners of the world.

He spent spent years spreading the faith among the downtrodden of Peru, including at the Diocese of Chiclayo. He was then called to the Vatican, where he helped further Pope Francis’ mission to take Catholicism into the 21 ^st century.

And now he’s the man in charge of overseeing the entire Catholic flock, which amounts to about 1.4 billion people – over an eighth of the world’s population.

But it all started with humble beginnings.

Prevost was born in Chicago on Sept. 14, 1955, to Louis Marius Prevost and Mildred Martinez, and raised in the Windy City with two brothers.

His father was a Navy veteran of World War II who rose to the ranks of lieutenant before becoming a superintendent for Chicago public schools after the war. His mother was a librarian. The family came from Spanish, French, and Italian descent, and Prevost was raised to speak the languages fluently from an early age.

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Mom Mildred was also a devout Catholic, and brought her sons to St. Mary of the Assumption Church on E. 137th Street, where she regularly sang in the choir.

Like countless Americans, Prevost’s first role in the church started as simple as it comes – serving as an altar boy in his neighborhood parish, and then attending the local Catholic school and minor seminary school.

Prevost’s brothers said the trio of boys grew up like any other American household – but that the youngest of them always set his sights on the church.

“It was just a normal childhood,” said Prevost’s 71-year-old older brother, John. “It’s kind of strange, but all three of us knew what we wanted to do very early in life.”

“And Rob — that’s what we called him since he was little — knew he was going to be a priest from the time he could walk,” he told the Daily Herald. “A neighbor once said he was going to be pope someday. How’s that for a prognostication?”

But Prevost patently refused to entertain the idea for almost his entire life — until the night before conclave started and he asked his brothers what papal name he should pick if elected, John said.

“It was a shocking moment,” John added, explaining that he found out his brother had been chosen on the news just as everybody else in the world did. The new pope is also a White Sox fan, not a Cubs fan, John assured WGN after news broke.

Prevost went on to earn a degree in mathematics from Villanova University – a Catholic school outside of Philadelphia — and when he decided to become a priest he joined the Order of St. Augustine in 1977 before becoming ordained.

Then as he turned 30 in 1985, Prevost’s future began to take shape when relocated to Peru and he worked at several missions. Three years later in 1988 he settled down in the Latin American country full time, working as a local pastor and teacher in Trujillo.

He stayed there for 10 years, and used the linguistic skills he’d learned from his mother to connect with the area’s marginalized, impoverished and overlooked communities.

Prevost later returned to America when he was elected to head the Augustinian Province of Chicago – which he was twice chosen to lead – but throughout the time back home would continually return to Peru to continue his work there.

All the while, the Argentinian cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio kept close tabs on the Chicago missionary toiling away in his Latin American back yard.

When he became Pope Francis in 2013, he appointed Prevost bishop of Diocese of Chiclayo – Peru’s poorest enclave. Prevost then became a Peruvian citizen in 2015.

The pair’s friendship extended from there, until Francis named Prevost a cardinal in 2023 and then called him to the Vatican to lead the Dicastery for Bishops, a powerful position which oversees the vetting, selection, and appointment of bishops around the world.

In early 2025, one of Francis’s last acts before his April death was bestowing Prevost with the most senior rank among cardinals — quietly making the American an unofficial favorite to succeed the pope.

Prevost was always a close ally of Francis, and the late pontiff leaned up him to help roll out many of his progressive reforms designed to modernize the Catholic church.

Among Prevost’s more controversial moves with Francis was adding women to the voting bloc that decides which bishop nominations — a first in the church’s history.

He also supported Francis’ views on fighting climate change and making the church more inclusive.

During that time Prevost has been outspoke about his own views, and notably spent years criticizing President Trump’s stance on illegal immigration, reposting articles and tweets on X that characterized the president’s policies as the antithesis of church teaching and the American Dream itself.

And like several leaders in the church, Prevost previously faced his own criticism in 2000 when over allegations that he mishandled or failed to act on sexual abuse cases involving priests in both the US and Peru.

But the new pope Prevost has made bringing Catholicism into the modern era a priority in recent years, telling Vatican News when he arrived in the city in 2023 that it was of paramount importance.

“One must not give in to the temptation to live isolated, separated in a palace, satisfied with a certain social level or a certain level within the church,” he said. “We must not hide behind an idea of authority that no longer makes sense today.”