What to know on Pope Leo XIV: Meet Robert Prevost, a multilingual Chicago native and Villanova graduate

Learn more about Pope Leo XIV after he was selected to become the first American-born pontiff. Robert Francis Prevost grew up in Chicago and attended Villanova.

For centuries, the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church were largely Italians until a cardinal from Poland was elected pope in 1978 and then succeeded by a German and an Argentine.

Now, for the first time, the pope's an American who has taken the name Leo XIV.

And he's from the South Side of Chicago, home of the beleaguered White Sox, the Daley political dynasty and, until they decamped for Washington and eventually the White House, Michelle and Barack Obama.

Prevost, who has spent much of his career ministering in Peru and leading the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops, was born Robert Francis Prevost on Sept. 14, 1955, at what was then called Mercy Hospital, at the corner of South Prairie Avenue and 34th Street.

But while Prevost made his debut in Chicago, his parents and two older brothers were already living just south of the sprawling city in a working-class suburb called Dolton.