Pope Leo XIV was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1955. He graduated from Villanova University in Pennsylvania with a degree in mathematics, then studied theology at the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago. 

When he was 27, he was sent to Rome to study, and he was ordained as a priest in 1982. He then went to work as a missionary Peru. He returned to the U.S. for a few years and then went back to Peru, where he ran an Augustinian seminary in Trujillo.

In 2014, he was appointed apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo in Peru by Pope Francis, according to the Vatican. A year later, he became a bishop.