Robert Prevost Cardinal.
The Conclave chose the 267th Pope of the Catholic Church. It is Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. US citizen and Peruvian, professor, missionary, pastor and man of Curia. A cardinal very close to Bergoglio’s vision, but with a more reserved character. Less impulsive. Reflective, with great listening ability and with a measured smile, to Mario Draghi. A man capable of being bridge between the South and the North of the world. A person, says who works next to him, in which the pragmatism of a North American and the sensitivity of the Latin Americans coexist. Probably the “less American” of the US cardinals, also because two thirds of his life lived him in Latin America and Europe.
His pastoral inclination, the global perspective and the ability to govern the offices of the Vatican Curia are the main qualities that make him elect him as the successor of Pope Francis and 267th pontiff of the Catholic Church.
It seems fitting how much the Catholic theological union to greet the appointment as a cardinal of Prevost in 2023 in a statement in 2023: “He brings the heart of a missionary and years of ministerial experience to the Cardinal College that ranges from academic classrooms to the poor neighborhoods to the top of the administration. He embodies the evangelical call to be ready to serve the spirit everywhere.” Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago on September 14, 1955, on a Wednesday.
The future Pope was born in the days when the metropolis of the Illinois is shaken by a racial crime that occurred in Mississippi, of which a 14 -year -old African American teenager, Emmett Louis Till, originally from Chicago, is victims. The story is considered one of the events that will strengthen the civil rights movement in the United States. The local registers report that Robert Francis Prevost, like his older brothers, Louis Martin and John Joseph, was born at the Mercy Hospital between the 25th Strada and Prairie Avenue. His parents, at the time 35 and 43 years old, lived in a new brick house in 1949, paying a monthly mortgage of 42 dollars.
Louis Prevost (French and Italian origin) was the superintendent of the schools of the southern suburbs of District 169 Two years later he achieved a master’s degree in education. Two of his sisters were nuns. Robert Francis studies at the St. Mary of the Asshoption School in Fare South Side. A photo of November 1962 shows him at 7 years old, in class, aligned with his companions, wearing a white shirt and a tie.
At the end of the eighth grade, Prevost begins to attend St. Augustine Seminary High School, managed by priests of the Order of Sant’Agostino. Then he moved to Villanova University, near Filadelphia, where he graduated in mathematics in 1977. In the stress year he enters the novitiate of the order of Sant’Agostino, in the province of Our Lady of good advice, in Saint Louis. On August 29, 1981 he issued the solemn votes. Then he graduated in theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.
At the age of 27 he was sent by the Order to Rome to study canon law at the Angelicum, the Pontifical University of San Tommaso d’Aquino in which he also studied Karol Wojtyla. Prevost receives priestly ordination in Rome on June 19, 1982 at the hands of Archbishop Jean Jadot, pro-president of the Vatican Secretariat for non-Christians. After ordering the young priest has the opportunity to meet John Paul II. A photo that the parish of St. Mary of the Assumeation included in the 1986 book that celebrates its 100th anniversary shows Robert Francis who smiles shyly while shaking the hand of a smiling John Paul II. Behind them, another priest smiles smiles.
It is later to prevost begins its missionary activity. He is sent to work in the chulucanas mission, in Piura, in the north of Peru, where he remained in 1985 and 1986.
In 1987 he obtained his doctorate with the thesis: “The role of the local prior of the order of Sant’Agostino”. In the same year he was elected director of the vocations and director of the missions of the Augustinian province “Mother of the good advice “by Olympia Fields, in Illinois (USA). In 1988 he returned to Peru in the mission of Trujillo as director of the common training project of the Augustinian aspiring of the vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos and Apurímac. There he assumes various positions: Prior of Community (1988-1992), director of the training (1988-1998) and teacher of the Professions of Professions (1992-1998).
In 1999 Prevost returned to the United States, with the role of provincial prior of the province “Mother of the good advice “(Chicago). After two and a half years, the ordinary general chapter of the Augustinians elects him Prior General, the ministry that the order entrusted to him again in the 2007 Ordinary General Chapter of 2007. In October 2013 Prevost returned to his province (Chicago) to be a teacher of the Professions and Provincial Vicar.
Prevost maintains these positions until Pope Francis appoints him, on November 3, 2014, apostolic administrator of the diocese of Chiclayo (Peru), raising him to the episcopal dignity of Bishop who owns the diocese of Sufar. Prevost is ordered bishop on December 12, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in the cathedral of his diocese. He is bishop of Chiclayo since September 26, 2015. In the same year Prevost obtained Peruvian citizenship.
In an interview with Vatican News, Prevost recalled that he has always heard the closeness of Francesco. “He asked me: ‘How are you? How are things going? ‘”
When in 2023, in an interview published on the Augustinian website, Prevost is asked what it means to be a good shepherd, he replies:“Being a good shepherd means being able to accompany the people of God and to live close to him, not to be isolated. Pope Francis said it clearly many times. He does not want bishops who live in buildings. He wants bishops who live in relation to God, with the rest of the episcopate, with priests and above all with the people of God in a way that reflects the compassion and love of Christ, creating community, learning to live what it means to be part of the Church in an integral way that includes a lot of listening and dialogue. The bishop must have many skills. He must know how to govern, how to administer, how to organize and how to be in contact with people. But if I had to identify a feature above all the others, it is the one that must announce Jesus Christ and live the faith so that the faithful see in his testimony an incentive to want to be increasingly active of the Church that Jesus Christ himself founded. In short, helping people to know Christ through the gift of faith “
From March 2018 Prevost has become the second vice president of the Peruvian episcopal conference. Pope Francis appoints him in 2019 member of the Congregation for the Clergy and in 2020 Member of the Congregation for Bishops.
A very young deacon prevost with Pope Karol Wojtyla.
On April 15, 2020 Francis appointed him apostolic administrator of the diocese of Callao.
From 30 January 2023 the cardinal with double citizenship is called to Rome, where he assumes the position of prefect of the dicastery for the bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.Prevost is created cardinal in the Consistory of 30 September 2023 and he is assigned the diaconia of Santa Monica, at the Santa Monica College, rennet by the Augustinians, in Piazza del Santo ‘office. Prevost takes possession of it on the morning of Sunday 20 January 2024.
For his role in the Curia Prevost he has the opportunity to meet Pope Francis every Saturday morning. The purple told Vatican News that “At the beginning it was at 8 in the morning. But sometimes I arrived at 7.30 and he was already waiting for me, so I started going a little more and sometimes he anticipated”. Prevost recalled a detail: “He told me, among other things, at the end of the hearing:” Do not miss the sense of humor, you have to smile “.
In these years Romanian Prevost has expressed only one regret. “I consider myself an amateur tennis player,” he told an interviewer. “Since I left Peru I had few opportunities to train, so I can’t wait to get back on the pitch.”
Now it will have even less time.
On the challenges that await the Church, Prevost had clearly expressed himself in the 2023 interview: “We must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God and at the same time understand what the Church is in its universal reality. This is one of the things I learned when I was a general of the Augustinians and it was certainly a great preparation for the role I have now. There are many different cultures, many different circumstances in which the church in which the church in which the church responds. So, in listing our priorities and in evaluating the challenges in front of us, we must know that the emergencies of Italy, Spain, the United States, Peru or China, for example, most likely are not the same, except for one thing: the basic challenge that Christ has left to Catholics to preach the Gospel and that it is the same everywhere. Diversity of the people of God is tremendously useful because it makes us more sensitive to achieving and responding better to what we expect from us “.
