The election of Robert Francis Prevost as the first US pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church surprised many around the world and brought pride to Chicago’s southeast side, where he was born and raised.
The 267th occupant of the throne of St Peter was born in 1955 and grew up in Dolton, a historically working-class Catholic suburb.
Chicagoans celebrated the rise of one of their own to the papacy, including those in the city’s strong Irish-American Catholic community.
Paddy Homan, vice-president of philanthropy and community affairs at the Plymouth Place retirement community, was with a resident when he first saw the news on TV.
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“She was overjoyed,” he said. “It was just a great message of hope, having one of our own there.”
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Homan, who is originally from Cork, moved to Chicago in 2007 and is also a professional tenor.
“I’m just so proud that this guy would be chosen, not just because he’s from Chicago but because he spent decades and decades in the service of others.”
Homan suggested the 69-year-old’s time commitment to service is “symbolic” of the city. “Chicago is a city of big shoulders; they look out for one another.”
Prevost and his two older brothers were raised by their parents in Dolton. His father, a US naval service veteran of second World War, was a school principal, while his mother worked as a librarian. Both died in the 1990s.
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Fr Michael Gilligan, rector of San Rocco oratory in nearby Chicago Heights, said he was “flabbergasted” by the news. “The cardinals elected an American, not because he’s an American but because he’s really a nice guy.”
Gilligan, whose grandparents hailed from Kerry and Limerick, said Pope Leo XIV would get “a royal welcome” if returns home. “He’s not Irish, you have to forgive that. But I think he’ll be very successful pope.”
Prevost completed elementary school locally and, in 1969, travelled to Michigan to attend St Augustine Seminary High School. He spent some time at a now-closed seminary not far from Dolton and then went on to study at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.
He returned to Chicago soon after, gaining a degree in theology from the Catholic Theological Union on the southside of the city in 1982 before being ordained in Rome later that year.
He moved to Peru in 1985, serving for a decade as a priest and a teacher in Trujillo in the northwest of the country before returning to Chicago. Prevost was elected to lead the Augustinians’ Midwest province in the US in 1999 and moved to Rome in 2001 to head the global Augustinian order.
He returned to Peru in 2013 and was appointed bishop of Chiclayo two years later, remaining in that position until becoming a cardinal in 2023.
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Prevost has faced criticism for his handling of sex abuse cases in both the US and Peru. In one case, he was accused of allowing Fr James Ray to live in a friary near a Catholic elementary school in Chicago in 2000, despite allegations against Ray of abusing minors. The Vatican denied that Prevost approved the accommodation.
Earlier this year, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) submitted complaints to the Vatican about six cardinals, including Prevost.
Dan McNevin, a member of SNAP’s board of directors, said the group was “disappointed” by Prevost’s election to the papacy.
“He just didn’t do anything special that would give us any confidence he has the ethics or the morality to do the right thing for survivors. So in that respect, we are concerned.”
McNevin said he and SNAP hoped to collaborate with the Vatican under Pope Leo XIV.
“This is a pivotal time for the Catholic Church,” he said. “We are concerned that he won’t be a champion of transparency as a pope, but we really hope that he will.”
Homan shares a broad optimism for the future of the church. “I hope this pope will be that unifying voice that can stretch across the different nationalities and faiths and traditions,” he said. “Of course, now we have to trace has he some ancestry going back home to Ireland.”
