Fabrizio Peloni, Wojciech Rogacin – Vatican
„We are at the general audience to show him our closeness and to once again embrace our former classmate, who today is the 266th Successor of Peter” – say ten of the 82 students who, along with Robert Francis Prevost, graduated from Saint Mary’s School in Riverdale, Illinois, in 1969.
Bob Prevost – Leo XIV
Jerome Clemens, who came from the United States, proudly holds in his hands – almost waving it – a group photograph showing all the students together, pointing out in turn the nine other classmates present in St. Peter’s Square, warmed by the spring sun. And then he adds: “And here is our ‘colleague’, the Pope,” pointing first to a photo of Prevost, who was not yet fourteen, and then – on the back – to his handwritten signature “Bob Prevost,” to which the Pope today added “Leo XIV.”
As the Pope’s classmates said, they already felt in school that he would become a priest. “We knew it since fourth grade. Bob was very religious,” one of his classmates recounts.
This was not the first meeting of the classmates with Robert Prevost since graduation. A few years ago, he came to his hometown as a cardinal. The classmates show recordings of the Holy Mass presided over by Cardinal Prevost.
At school like in a family
Near Jerome, John Riggio recalls the very family-like atmosphere at the school: “It was more than a school – it was a family,” he says. It was there that Leo XIV’s mother, Mildred Agnes Prevost, worked as a librarian and was deeply involved in both the school and parish life, recalls Ms. Sherry Blue, visibly moved.
At the end of the audience, they all embraced the Pope in one big hug and took a commemorative photo, which – “most likely will be framed and placed also in Saint Mary’s.”
