Robert Francis Prevost, the biography of the new Pope

First Agustino Pope, is the second American Pontiff, after Francisco, but unlike Bergoglio, the American Robert Francis Prevost, 69 years old, is originally from the north of the continent. In fact, the new Bishop of Rome was born on September 14, 1955 in Chicago (Illinois), son of Louis Marius Prevost, of French and Italian descent, and of Mildred Martínez, of Spanish ancestry. He has two brothers, Louis Martín and John Joseph.

He passes his childhood and adolescence with his family and studies first at the Minor Seminary of the Augustinian parents and then at the University of Villanova, Pennsylvania, where he graduates in mathematics and studies philosophy in 1977. On September 1 of that same year he enters the novitiate of the Order of St. Augustine (OSA) of St. Louis, in the province of Our Lady of the good Council of Chicago, and makes his first. September 1978. On August 29, 1981, it broadcasts the solemn votes.

He receives his training at the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago, licensed in theology. And at 27 he is sent by his superior to Rome to study Canon Law at the Pontifical Santo Tomás de Aquino University (Angelicum). In the city, a priest is ordered on June 19, 1982 at the Agustiniano School of Santa Monica by Monsignor Jean Jadot, pro-president of the Pontifical Council for non-Christians, today Dicastery for the interreligious dialogue.

Prevost has granted in 1984 and the following year, while preparing his doctoral thesis, he is sent to the Augustinian Mission of Chulucanas, Piura, Peru (1985-1986). It is in 1987 when he discusses his doctoral thesis on “the role of the prior local prior of the order of San Agustín” and is appointed director of vocations and director of missions of the Augustinian province “mother of good advice” in Olympia Fields, Illinois (USA).

The following year he joined the Mission of Trujillo, also in Peru, as director of the common training project for the Augustinian candidates of the Vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos and Apurímac.

In the eleven-year space he plays the prior’s prior positions (1988-1992), training director (1988-1998) and professor of professors (1992-1998) and, in the Archdiocese of Trujillo, of Vicar Judicial (1989-1998) and professor of canon, patristic and moral law in the Major Seminary «San Carlos and San Marcelo». At the same time, the pastoral attention of Our Lady Mother of the Church is confused, later parish with the title of Santa Rita (1988-1999), in the poor periphery of the city, and was a parochial administrator of Our Lady of Monserrat from 1992 to 1999.

In 1999 he was elected provincial prior of the Augustinian province ‘Mother of the Good Council’ of Chicago, and two and a half years later, in the Ordinary general Chapter of the Order of San Agustín, his brothers chose him a prior general, confirming him in 2007 for a second mandate.

In October 2013, he returned to his Augustinian province, in Chicago, and was a training director of the Convent of San Agustín, first provincial counselor and vicar; Charges he held until Pope Francis appointed him, on November 3, 2014, Apostolic Administrator of the Peruvian Diocese of Chiclayo, raising him to episcopal dignity as the titular bishop of Sufar. He entered the diocese on November 7, in the presence of the Apostolic Nuncio James Patrick Green, who orders him a little more than a month later, on December 12, feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in the Cathedral of Santa María.

His episcopal motto is “in illo one unum”, words that St. Augustine pronounces in a sermon, the exhibition on Psalm 127, to explain that “although Christians are many, in the only Christ we are one.”

On September 26, 2015 he was appointed Bishop of Chiclayo by the Argentine Pontiff and in March 2018 he was elected second vice president of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference, within which he is also a member of the Economic Council and President of the Commission of Culture and Education.

In 2019 by Francisco, it is counted among the members of the Congregation for the clergy on July 13, 2019 and the following year, among those of the Congregation for Bishops (November 21).

Meanwhile, on April 15, 2020, the papal appointment also arrives as an apostolic administrator of the Peruvian diocese of Callao.

On January 30, 2023, the Pope calls him to Rome as a prefect of Dicastery for the bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, promoting it to Archbishop. And in the Consistory of September 30 of the same year he created it and appointed Cardinal, assigning the Diaconate of Santa Monica. Prevost took possession on January 28, 2024 and, at the head of Dicastery, participated in the latest apostolic trips of Pope Francis and in the first and second sessions of the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of the Bishops on Sinodality, held in Rome from October 4 to 29, 2023 and from October 2 to 27, 2024, respectively, an experience in synod assemblies already acquired in the past. Agustinos and representative of the General Superior Union (UGS).

Meanwhile, on October 4, 2023, Francisco is counted among the members of the Dicasteries for Evangelization, section for the first evangelization and the new particular churches; for the doctrine of faith; for oriental churches; For the clergy; for the institutes of consecrated life and the societies of apostolic life; for culture and education; for legislative texts; of the Pontifical Commission for the State of the city of the Vatican.

Finally, on February 6 of this year, it was promoted to the order of the bishops by the Argentine Pontiff, obtaining the title of the suburbicar Church of Albano.

During the last hospitalization of his predecessor in the polyclinic “Gemelli”, Prevost presided over the rosary for Francisco’s health on March 3 in the Plaza de San Pedro.