Catholics celebrate west Michigan roots of Pope Leo XIV
Michigan Catholics took pride Thursday not only in seeing the election of the first U.S.-born pope, but Pope Leo XIV's ties to west Michigan, where he attended a seminary high school.
The cardinals elected to the papacy Robert Prevost, a missionary who was born in Chicago, spent his career ministering in Peru and took over the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops. Detroit Archbishop Edward Weisenburger noted at a Thursday press conference that Prevost had Midwest roots, having studied at the now-defunct St. Augustine Seminary in Holland and then the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where he earned a master's in divinity degree.
"That gives him a tie to us," Weisenberger said at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Detroit. "There's a certain amount of pride Americans can take in this."
Prevost attended an Augustinian minor seminary in Alleghan County, which now falls within the Diocese of Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo Bishop Edward Lohse said.
The diocese became aware of Prevost’s past history there after Prevost shared it with Lohse at a conference shortly after Lohse was installed as bishop in 2023. Prior to Thursday’s election, Prevost led the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops and was involved in the week-long conference Lohse attended, the Kalamazoo bishop said.
“When I first introduced myself to him, I said, 'I am Bishop Lohse from Kalamazoo,'” Lohse said. “His immediate response was, ‘Oh, I know Kalamazoo. I was in the high school there when the diocese was established.’”
The minor seminary, St. Augustine Seminary High School in Laketown Township, no longer exists. Lohse said he believed the property was sold to the state, and much of it later was torn down. The high school likely fell within the Diocese of Grand Rapids while Prevost attended his freshman and sophomore year, Lohse said, and in the Diocese of Kalamazoo for Prevost's last two years of high school. The Diocese of Kalamazoo was created in 1971.
Augustinians from Chicago have helped at parishes in the diocese for decades, up until about five years ago, Lohse said. Prevost was one of those who would help out at parishes. In fact, Lohse recalled, a parishioner at St. Mary in Niles, who remembered Prevost as a priest at the parish, asked Lohse if he’d met Prevost while at his conference in 2023.
“There are people there who still have a very warm regard for him when he used to be the priest who showed up for Sunday mass,” Lohse said. “Not only do we know him now as our pope, but he also knows us because he was a priest here in western Michigan.”
Lohse’s own interactions with Prevost during that week-long conference left an impression.
“Every time I spoke with him, I came away from the conversations thinking this is a genuinely good man,” Lohse said.
“I think that my impressions from that week were not just me,” he added. “I think the cardinals were perceiving the same thing based on how quickly he was elected.”
Detroit leaders weigh in
Weisenburger said he never expected to ever see an American pope during his lifetime.
"For a long time, the concern was geopolitics, that certain countries, nations would fear that the United States has sort of taken over the papacy or the Catholic church," he said. "However, when you look at our new pope, Leo XIV, you get the very clear impression that this is a man of an incredible variety of talents and gifts and blessings."
Weisenburger said it was "profound" that the new pontiff did not speak in English during his first speech as pope, but instead in Italian, Latin and Spanish.
"I think he's revealing from the beginning that he really is a universal pastor," the Detroit archbishop said.
Monsignor G. Michael Bugarin, the pastor of St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in St. Clair Shores, echoed the archbishop's assessment, saying Pope Leo XIV has "got a lot of gifts to bring to the church.”
“As I always say, the Lord gives us the shepherds that we need at these particular moments in history,” he added.
He noted that Prevost was ordained into the Augustinians, which is a religious order. The order is based on the teaching of Jesus Christ and Aurelius Augustine, the bishop of Hippo from 354-430, which promotes the spirit of community as lived by the first Christian communities.
“He's just a very humble man, and he's a shepherd who looks after — as Pope Francis was looking after — the poor and the needy and those on the periphery,” Bugarin said after watching the pope's speech from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.
The faithful embrace pope
Stephanie Garsteck-Polak, a Catholic who lives in Clinton Township, said she's "so glad to have an American in there."
From her understanding of other popes named Leo, the name represents "a lot of social justice," she said.
"I think he's going to be all about inclusion," Garsteck-Polak said, "and he'll be really for the poor."
She added that Prevost has a college degree in mathematics — from Villanova University in Philadelphia in 1977 — so "hopefully he'll keep the finances good."
Colleen Maciejewski, the assistant principal at St. Anne Catholic Grade School in Warren, called the election of an American pope “very exciting.”
“I didn't think ever in my lifetime I would see an American pope, so that was exciting,” Maciejewski said. “He was not one that I really had thought was in the top running.”
She said the name that Prevost chose, Leo XIV, might be an indicator for “what he wants to do in his papacy.”
“And that would be as a bridge,” she said. “Leo the XIII was really known for the Catholic social teachings.”
Pope Leo XIII, who was head of the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903, laid the foundation for modern Catholic social thought, most famously with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed workers’ rights and capitalism at the dawn of the industrial age, according to the Associated Press. He criticized both laissez-faire capitalism and state-centric socialism, giving shape to a distinctly Catholic vein of economic teaching.
Maciejewski said the church bells rang at St. Anne when white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel and when Leo XIV appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica. The bells were ringing when the elementary students were at recess, so the knew that the new pope had been named, she said.
The school held a "mock conclave" on Monday, Maciejewski said, with the students researching the cardinals whom they thought might be the contenders for the papacy.
"We locked the middle school in a room, and they had their own little conclave, and it was great," said Maciejewski, who lives in St. Clair Shores. "It's just so exciting to be part of history."
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Catholics celebrate west Michigan roots of Pope Leo XIV
