Pope Leo XlV, who is Spanish and Franco-Italian, was chosen or appointed to lead the Catholic Church globally.
Pope Leo XlV is the 267th person to hold the throne of St. Peter and has taken on the title of Leo XIV.
His long time as a missionary in Peru has made him a Latin American cardinal, even though he was the first American to serve as pope.
September 15, 2025, was the birthdate of Pope Leo XIV. At the time this essay was written, he was 69 years old.
Leo was an altar boy who was ordained in 1982.
Which College Did Pope Attend?
In 1977 he joined the novitiate of the Order of Saint Augustine in the province of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Saint Louis.
On 29 August 1981 he completed his solemn vows. He studied at the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago, branching from there into requested studies in the Chicago area.
Upon turning 27, the Order dispatched him to the Romero Center in Ohio and subsequently to Rome for studies in canon law at the Pontifical Saint Thomas Aquinas University (Angelicum).
He received priestly ordination on 19 June 1982. His first professional assignment was to work in the mission of Chulucanas in Piura, Peru from 1985 through 1986. Subsequently in 1987 he was granted a doctorate with the dissertation “The local prior’s role in the Order of Saint Augustine.”
Once returned, that same year, he was appointed vocational director and later mission director of the Augustinian province “Mother of Good Counsel” of Olympia Fields, Illinois USA.
