Prevost, the Latin Yankee who unites the Americas. Who is the new pope

Robert Francis Prevost, 70, is a curious 'Latin American Yankee' figure. Prevost is a Curia cardinal, close to Bergoglio. Since 2023 he has been prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America. In the same year he received the purple. Born in Chicago to a family of French origin, Augustinian, he graduated in Canon Law. From 1985 to 1999 he was a missionary in Peru. He returned to Chicago and became prior of the Order of Saint Augustine in 2001, a position he held until 2013. In that year he returned to Peru, as Bishop of Ciclayo. Bergoglio called him to Rome in 2023. The American bishop, who is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French, had shown a particular concern for the marginalised and migrants in Peru, much appreciated by Francis.

As prefect for bishops, he appointed hundreds of prelates, forging a generation of open and progressive 'Bergoglian' religious. Prevost earned a reputation as a shy and balanced cardinal. In 2023 he managed, together with the secretary of state Parolin, the grana of the German Synodal Way: a debate within the Germanic dioceses that was becoming too innovative, and risked provoking a schism. Prevost brought the path back into orthodoxy, but without trauma.

He completed his secondary education in the minor seminary of the Augustinian Fathers, graduating in 1973.[2] In 1977, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematical sciences and a diploma in philosophy from Villanova University in Philadelphia. On 1 September 1977, he entered the Saint Louis novitiate of the Province of Our Lady of Good Counsel of the Order of Saint Augustine, which covers the mid-western United States of America. On 29 August 1981 he made his solemn profession.[1] The following year he obtained his Master of Divinity degree from the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. On 19 June 1982 he was ordained a priest in Rome by Monsignor Jean Jadot, Pro-President of the Secretariat for Non-Christians.

However, a couple of accusations of covering up sexual abuse of priests, in Chicago and Peru, weigh on the American prelate. Last year Prevost and his successor in the Illinois capital, Blaise Cupich (also a progressive) were denounced for failing to take action between the 1980s and 1990s against two Augustinians who were later convicted of abuse. In Peru, the prefect for bishops was accused by three sisters of covering up their complaint that they had been sexually abused by two priests. The diocese of Ciclayo explained that the then bishop had advised them to complain to the civil authorities, and that the canonical process had been interrupted when the judiciary had dismissed the case due to the statute of limitations.