Brother “Rob”, Father “Bob”: Journey to the USA in the footsteps of Robert Francis Prevost

Salvatore Cernuzio – Sent in Chicago

“Rob”, the brother; “Bob”, the brother; “Robert”, the friend, the companion of studies, excursions and demonstrations for human rights; “Prevost”, the outstanding student, the missionary, the “leader” at the head of one of the most widespread religious orders in the world. And then “Leo”, the Pope. The Pontiff whose election everyone in Peru took for granted, while in America it was expected, yes, but few believed “because he is American.”

In his homeland, Chicago (United States), Robert Francis Prevost always left a mark on whoever encountered him, long before becoming Leo XIV. Merit of a human trait that is courteous, kind, quite reserved, not so much as to prevent him from socializing and making new friends. Like that time in Beaubien Woods, the forest a few miles from his hometown in Dolton, a suburb of Chicago, where he ventured on a bicycle with his older brother Louis, encountering a gang of boys who threatened to beat them.

“Rob said, ‘Let me talk to them.’ He got out, walked over and somehow calmed them down. He made them… friends,” recalls Louis himself, now living in Florida, in contact every night with the illustrious brother and with the middle brother, John – called Jay -, via video call (“Normally we talk for between 15 and 20 minutes on the phone, just to tell what we are doing, what he is doing”).

Dialogue, confrontation, friendship

An anecdote from childhood that is not intended to demonstrate a uniqueness at all costs of the one who was elected Pontiff of the Universal Church on May 8, but rather to help discover a personality who, from his earliest years, showed himself inclined to dialogue, confrontation, friendship. To friendship with fellow brothers, with couples and families, even with a Lutheran pastor – John Snider of Minneapolis – who, when not going with him to the movies to see The Blues Brothersspent dinners “discussing some of the Catholic practices.” All these characteristics, of dialogue, confrontation and friendship, are deeply Augustinian.

Vocation that the young “Bob” (“Now he is Leo, but in my heart he will always be Bob,” everyone in Chicago says) embraced in his youth and which was the path he followed during his studies at Villanova University in Philadelphia and at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.

The “choice”

«He was respectful of men and women alike. There was no doubt that he was focused on his vocation, but this included having very close friends,” says Mary Donar-Reale, a friend of Prevost since the time at Villanova, a companion not in class but on trips to Washington with the “Pro-life group” to participate in the March for Life, the demonstration in defense of life and all human rights. Those rights that Father Robert promoted during the years in Peru, where he decided to leave after a tragic accident that reduced the Augustinian mission by half.

A crucial moment in his life: “He could have taught in a seminary or held a great position in a diocese or archdiocese,” relates Augustinian Father Tom McCarthy, a long-time friend. «After studying all that time to obtain the Doctorate in Canon Law, where did you end up going? “To the poor… To the poor, who need the preaching of Jesus.”

At the service of others

A choice also the result of his studies in Social Doctrine of the Church, a subject that always fascinated him, as Sister Dianne Bergant, an energetic nun and teacher of the future Pope at CTU, remembers. «I have often heard it said that he was a very devout boy and that he played at being a priest. Well, I was also a very devout girl and I played at “being a priest.” It is not uncommon for children who have received religious education to want to be something in the Church. What is notable about him is the way he used what God gave him, nature, how he used it, the decisions he made. He didn’t put himself on a pedestal but put himself at the service of other people. “This made him exceptional.”

Stories, anecdotes, stories, interviews, images from Leo XIV’s years in the US are all contained in the documentary “Leo from Chicago”a production of the Dicastery for Communication that will be broadcast on the Vatican Radio – Vatican News channels from November 10.