Who Is Pope Leo XIV: What to Know About American Cardinal Robert Prevost

What are Robert Prevost’s international credentials?

Prevost joined an Augustine mission to Peru in 1985 and was chancellor of the Territorial Prélature of Chulucanas for a year. He returned to the country in 1988, spending 10 years as head of the Augustinian seminary in Trujillo, where he also taught canon law and served as prefect of studies.

In 2001, Prevost was elected to a six-year term as Prior General of the Augustinians and reelected in 2007, keeping him in Chicago. He served as director of formation in the Convent of St. Augustine in Chicago from 2013 to 2014, then returned to Peru, where he spent a year as Apostolic Administrator of Chiclayo. 

In 2015, he was appointed Bishop of Chiclayo and remained in that post until 2023.

Prevost, who has dual Peruvian citizenship, speaks English, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese, and can read Latin and German.

He understands that the center of Catholicism “is not in the United States or the North Atlantic,” Raúl E. Zegarra, assistant professor of Catholic theological studies at Harvard Divinity School, told the New York Times.