Robert Francis Prevost was born in Chicago on September 14, 1955. But his family history takes in surprising paths: Italy, France, the Caribbean and South America. The son of Louis Marius Prevost, a World War II veteran, and Mildred Martinez, a librarian of Spanish and Creole origin, the new Pope carries a multicultural heritage.
Your paternal grandfather, Giovanni Prevosto, was born in 1876 in Settimo Vittone, in the province of Turin, in northern Italy, and emigrated to the United States when he was still young.
There, he Italianized the name to John R. Prevost and married Susanne Marie Fabre, a French woman born in 1894. The surname “Prevost”, common in France, rarely appears in Italy — but when it does occur, it is most frequent in Piedmont, reinforcing the connection with the north of the country.
The family settled in Chicago in the early 1920th century. In XNUMX, the Pope's father, Louis Marius, was born and would go on to pursue a career in education. Mildred, the future pontiff's mother, was the daughter of a family with roots in New Orleans and Caribbean ancestry.
A Pope with many maps in his blood
Prevost grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, in a modest house he bought in 1949, and was the youngest of three brothers. But his biography would soon take on global proportions: he joined the Augustinian order, lived for more than a decade in Peru as a missionary, was elected prior general of the order and later named bishop of Chiclayo, in northern Peru.
His performance caught the attention of Roma. In 2023, he took over the powerful Dicastery for Bishops, the body that decides who will be the new ecclesiastical leaders throughout the world. Since then, he has become a central figure in the administration of the Church.
In addition to his American citizenship, Prevost also holds Peruvian nationality, reflecting his background in the southern part of the continent. Now, as Pope Leone XIV, he combines Italian roots, Latin American experience and North American education in a single profile.
A genealogy that mixes worlds
The Piedmontese origins of Leo XIV are not just a detail: they show how the history of Italian immigration still echoes in prominent global names. From the grandfather from Turin to the grandson on the throne of Peter, the journey of the Prevost family is an example of how identities intersect and transform.
And while the brick home where he grew up in Dolton, Illinois, is now for sale, his name has come to occupy the center of the contemporary history of the Catholic Church.
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