The new Bishop of Rome, Pope Leo XIV, is very much destined to lead the Catholic Church. Before his election, then Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost told Italian network Rai that he grew up in a family of immigrants.

“I was born in the United States...But my grandparents were all immigrants, French, Spanish... I was raised in a very Catholic family, both of my parents were very engaged in the parish,” he said.

Prevost was born on 14 September 1955 in Chicago, Illinois, to parents Louis Marius Prevost, of French and Italian descent, and Mildred Martínez, of Spanish descent. He has two brothers, Louis Martín and John Joseph.

As a child, Pope Leo XIV “played priest,” John told ABC News. “The ironing board was the altar.”

Prevost spent his childhood and adolescence with his family, studying at the Minor Seminary of the Augustinian Fathers and at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where he earned a Degree in Mathematics and also studied Philosophy.

In the same year, Prevost entered the novitiate of the Order of Saint Augustine (O.S.A.) in Saint Louis, in the Province of Our Lady of Good Counsel of Chicago, and made his first profession on 2 September 1978. On 29 August 1981, he made his solemn vows.

The Pontiff received a theological education at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. At 27, Prevost went to Rome to study Canon Law at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum).

“It was pretty apparent back then that was going to be his route,” John Doughney, a St. Mary’s graduate, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “Some of us had considered it. It was kind of a fantasy for most young men. For him, I think it was true calling.”

Prevost was ordained a priest on 19 June 1982 at the Augustinian College of Saint Monica by Archbishop Jean Jadot.

While preparing his doctoral thesis the following year, Prevost was sent to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Piura, Peru (1985–1986).