Pope Leo XIV

📍Chiclayo, Lambayeque, Peru

“Robert Francis Prevost grew up in Dolton, a working-class suburb on Chicago's South Side, the youngest of three brothers in a devout family. He served as an altar boy and, his brothers recall, played at saying Mass as a child. He joined the Augustinian order, studied maths and theology, and in 1985 first went to Peru on mission, beginning decades of work there. In 2015 Pope Francis made him bishop of Chiclayo, a busy city on Peru's dry northern coast, and that year he became a Peruvian citizen. People in the north called him close to the poor: during the pandemic he raised funds to obtain oxygen plants for the city's hospitals, and when floods struck in 2022 and 2023 he drove a van of supplies to rural villages along the La Leche River himself, wading through the mud in rubber boots. When he was elected pope in May 2025, the first from the United States, Chiclayo celebrated as if one of its own had been chosen, and pilgrims now follow a route through the city in his footsteps.”

Sources: nbcnewyork.com angelusnews.com britannica.com