While Pope Leo owes his formal education almost solely to the northern hemisphere, much of his shaping as a practitioner occurred in Peru. “Those are the life experiences that give you life to continue on, that nourish you,” says Turley, who was Prevost’s superior when he arrived. “As a young priest, to go through that, and see how beautiful it is, how poor people can be, and yet all of the goodness and the power of people when they come together, and the wonderful things that they can do if you start breaking down prejudices and division.” Prevost said as much at St. Jude’s: “The part of ministry that most shaped my life is Peru.” 

After a decade in South America, it must have been quite an adjustment to take on the role of head of his home Augustinian province, which stretches throughout the Midwest and into Canada. One of his duties as provincial prior was to minister to Augustinian schools, and he was called in to help out St. Rita of Cascia High School in Chicago. The students have a retreat every year, and the school likes to invite priests who are unfamiliar to the boys to hear confession so they don’t feel awkward. In 2000, Prevost was one of those priests. “I had gone to confession several times before, but it was like two minutes, let me get out of here as quickly as I can,” says Patrick “PJ” McCarthy. “But this was more of just a conversation.” The two sat knee to knee in the darkened room and talked about underage drinking and sibling rivalry, among other things. “He was not judging me, and he was just very open,” recalls McCarthy. Mike Stawski, who was on the retreat as a student leader, noticed right away that Prevost was different from most priests. “What was so fascinating about him was that almost immediately, we forgot that he wasn’t with us the whole time. He was so welcoming, so caring for what we were doing.”