In these early days of Pope Leo XIV, many Catholics have been busy pounding the digital pavement to unearth Robert Prevost’s earlier statements — whether in videos, interviews or tweets — to get a clearer sense of who this man is, how he views the Church and the world, and what major moves he might make in the weeks and months to come.
I’ve argued that the surest way to approach and anticipate Leo is precisely by starting with how he chose to introduce himself to the world on the loggia: “I am a son of St. Augustine.” Indeed, in a book foreword published in 2006, we see Prevost’s deep Augustinian roots coming to the fore.
Published work by Robert Prevost in English is scarce. There’s his 1987 dissertation for the Angelicum, “The Office and Authority of the Local Prior in the Order of Saint Augustine,” recently summarized by Brendan Towell in the Register and Dominican Father Thomas Joseph White for OSV, but which is unavailable publicly. Then there’s his 2002 Rule and Constitutions of the Order of Saint Augustine, which is likewise difficult to obtain. Aside from these two core texts, there are only a handful of obscure book chapters and journal articles, only one of which was written in English.
But shortly after Leo XIV’s election, a four-page foreword for Filipino Augustinian priest Mamerto A. Alfeche’s book Augustine on the Hope of Groaning Creation published by the University of San Agustin in the Philippines was circulated online in full. Written toward the end of his first six-year term as prior general of the Augustinian order, this text reveals a man thoroughly drenched in Augustine’s theology and spirituality — in particular, his eschatology, or understanding of the “last things.”
Prevost first reflects on Augustine’s “continued relevance in the life of the Church” and (nodding to Pope John Paul II’s 1986 letter Augustinum Hipponsensem) to “today’s culture.” This ancient Church Father asks “one of the ultimate questions of humanity: What is our destiny? Where are we going?” Inseparable from these eschatological questions for Augustine, Prevost notes, are anthropological questions: “Where did we come from and who are we?” The future Leo XIV then quotes from his great hero: “Life within this mortal existence is the basis for hope in immortality”; “There is no greater life than an eternal and happy life, given that if it is not eternal, it is not happy.” We are wired, Prevost adds, with the search or happiness, which is “an essential part of that permanent human desire to find life and immortality.”
Next, Prevost accentuates the author’s “clear understanding of Augustine’s philosophical and theological understanding of the role of HOPE in human life.” He again quotes the “Doctor of Grace”: “While the traveler, after all, finds it wearisome walking along, he puts up with the fatigue precisely because he hopes to arrive. Rob him of any hope of arriving, and straightaway, his strength is broken for walking.” Prevost goes on to say that “Christians share with all humans the virtue of hope in this life, but they have greater hope in the promise of eternal life, guaranteed by the resurrection of Christ and strengthened by the promise that only God can offer.” He then draws on one of Augustine’s sermons: “What God has promised you, he will give you. … He is almighty. … He is immortal.”
Finally, Prevost turns to the “central issue” in Alfreche’s study and the “ultimately important issue” in Augustine: “Bodily resurrection is a constitutive element of Christian eschatology.” Noting the “unilateral” emphasis by some commentators on the Platonic and Manichean influences on Augustine, and the accusation that he’s “negative and judgmental” in his understanding of the body and matter, Prevost counters that the great saint’s anthropology is that “body and soul form one integral reality that has been created and redeemed by God.” He marshals Augustine’s own words one last time: “The human consists of body and soul, and when God redeems us, he does so in our integrity. The Savior assumed our humanity in its integrity, so deigning to redeem in us the totality that he created.” Prevost then ties this anthropology to Augustine’s emphasis on “the reality of Christ’s humanity, insisting upon the intimate connection between the Incarnation and the Resurrection.” These ideas, he observes, flow together in Augustine’s theory of Totus Christus (“Total Christ”): “The Head is already risen and is the reason and the guarantee for the resurrection of all the members of the one Body.”
Prevost concludes the foreword with a lengthy extract from Benedict XVI’s Deus Cartias Est on the “unity in duality” of the human person as both spirit and body. But he first celebrates Alfreche’s work as a “serious academic” treatise with a “practical dimension”:
“Our secularized and materialistic world, especially in the West, needs to be reminded of this important message that brings hope. And St. Augustine makes it clear: Believers today need to be reminded of the bodily resurrection and [of] eternal life, to be strengthened in the faith that we share. We do not need to look for some kind of refuge in theories of reincarnation or cloning in order to find the true meaning of human life. Our faith in the resurrection of the body nourishes the hope that we have of finding true happiness which transcends the limits of our present condition. In spite of our limitations and of the problems of this world, we find ourselves enlightened by our belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the root of our dignity and our hope, He who is the Liberator of our human condition in all its dimensions.”
Though he doesn’t quote from the City of God directly — and this is, after all, just one piece of the Prevost puzzle — this foreword evinces a deep focus on Augustine’s classic theme of the civitate Dei: that eternal, heavenly Jerusalem in which the pilgrim Church on earth participates, on which it fixes its gaze, and toward which it is moving. The fallen city of man, as Augustine famously puts it, is built on the love of self even to the contempt of God, while the eternal city of God is built on the love of God even to the contempt of self. In short, the city of God — experienced in its eschatological fullness in the resurrection of the dead at the end of time — has a great primacy for the Christian. No political or social organization, institution, or project in this world — even the best and noblest of them — can be our greatest hope.
This theme seems to have remained on Prevost’s mind and heart in the years to come. In his 2012 address to the World Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization, Prevost cited Augustine’s masterpiece as a prime example of the Christian interrogation of “non-Christian and anti-Christian literary and rhetorical forces” at work in the world of history: “In his City of God, Augustine used the tale of Alexander the Great’s encounter with a captured pirate to ironize the supposed moral legitimacy of the Roman Empire.”
Even more tellingly, three years later, Prevost would take as his episcopal motto a line of Augustine — In illo Uno unum (“one in the One”) — from a commentary on the Psalms in which Augustine speaks of the Totus Christus idea referenced in the foreword a decade earlier: “When I speak of Christians in the plural, I understand one in the One Christ. You are therefore many, and you are one; we are many, and we are one. How are we many, and yet one? Because we cling unto Him whose members we are; and since our Head is in heaven, that His members may follow.”
In light of this rich background, some of Pope Leo’s early statements take on new resonance. After introducing himself as a son of St. Augustine, Leo spoke of journeying together “toward the homeland that God has prepared for us.” Later, in a speech to the Eastern Churches, he celebrated the mystical, transcendent dimensions of Eastern spirituality and liturgy: “It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God.” In a May 17 address to members of the Centesimus Annus Foundation, he quoted Gaudium et Spes, 4: “[The Church] should be able to answer the ever-recurring questions which people ask about the meaning of this present life and of the life to come and how one is related to the other.” Most recently, in the homily for his inaugural papal Mass, Leo XIV quoted three lines of Augustine, including his episcopal motto, concluding with a call to “walk towards God and love one another.”
Articulating the Church’s social doctrine will clearly be top of mind for a man who turned back to Leo XIII for his papal name. At the same time, Pope Leo seems to be a man who knows, down to his bones, that the Church isn’t striving to create heaven down here on earth; instead, it’s striving to draw earth up into heaven. Creation, “subjected to futility,” is “groaning in labor pains”; and we await our deliverance from Christ — and only Christ can deliver us — with patience and hope (Romans 8:20-25).
Matthew Becklo is a husband and father, writer and editor, and the publishing director for Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. His first book, The Way of Heaven and Earth: From Either/Or to the Catholic Both/And, was released in 2025.