Leo XIV: “Happy to be called Robert”
Dr Brian Heffernan has just written a biography of the new Pope entitled Leo XIV: An Augustinian Life in Context » published by Messenger Publications. In it, he says the Pontiff (Robert Prevost), “is as much at home driving seminarians around Trujillo in a minivan as navigating the politics of the Roman curia, and is happy to be simply called ‘Robert’ by his tablemates at the Synod on Synodality”.
The author surveys the successive contexts in which Pope Leo lived and worked prior to becoming Pope, such as the hanging suburbs of civil rights-era Chicago; a Peru terrorised by Shining Path (a violent, far-left Maoist guerrilla group); a South America changed by liberation theology; and an Augustinian Order rising to the challenges of the twenty-first century.
The book is based on extensive documentation, including rare Augustinian material. Whilst several books have appeared about Leo XIV since his election, this book is the first to extensively examine the Augustinian background that has shaped Pope Leo’s life and thinking. The author predicts that “It is his Augustinian consciousness that is likely to become a major thread that runs through his pontificate.”
The book is published by Messenger Publications and can be purchased here» for €12.95.
About the author
Dr Brian Heffernan holds a PhD from Maynooth University. He is a historian of modern Catholicism, and has written extensively on the Augustinian Friars. He lives in Brussels and is a researcher at the Catholic universities of KU Leuven and UCLouvain in Belgium, and an editor at DHGE – Louvain Dictionary of Church History.
