Pope Leo XIV's 71st Birthday Countdown

Pope Leo XIV Timeline

About Pope Leo XIV

An Augustinian friar, Prevost spent much of his ministry as a missionary and later bishop in Peru before being elected pope in May 2025. His papacy made history as the first led by a pope from the United States.

The White Sox fan who went south

Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago and grew up in Dolton, just south of the city, earned a mathematics degree from Villanova University in 1977, and joined the Order of St. Augustine. Ordained in 1982, he arrived in Chulucanas, Peru, in 1985 and spent much of the next three decades there as a missionary, seminary teacher and eventually Bishop of Chiclayo, becoming a naturalized Peruvian citizen along the way. He never lost his hometown loyalties: cameras caught the future pope in the stands at Game 1 of the White Sox's 2005 World Series.

White smoke and an American first

On May 8, 2025, white smoke rose over the Sistine Chapel and Cardinal Prevost stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter's as Pope Leo XIV - the 267th pope and the first ever born in the United States, now leading some 1.4 billion Catholics. His first words to the crowd: 'Peace be with all of you.' He chose the name in tribute to Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum defended workers in the industrial revolution, saying the church must now answer the new revolution of artificial intelligence.

Boots in the floodwater

In Peru they called him 'the saint of the north.' When the 2017 El Nino Costero floods destroyed homes across the Chiclayo region, Bishop Prevost didn't just coordinate the church's relief effort - witnesses recall him arriving by truck and loading aid kits himself. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when oxygen was unaffordable for many families, he led the 'Oxygen of Hope' campaign, rallying businesses and citizens to fund two oxygen plants offering free care to the neediest. That hands-on closeness to the poor now shapes his papacy.

Quick facts

• Born September 14, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois
• First pope born in the United States, and the 267th pope overall
• Elected on May 8, 2025, on the second day of the conclave
• Earned a mathematics degree from Villanova University in 1977
• Holds both U.S. and Peruvian citizenship after decades of ministry in Peru
• Lifelong Chicago White Sox fan who attended the 2005 World Series