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Could you imagine your elementary school classmate becoming the pope? The St. Mary’s School Class of 1969 can.
The Pope’s former classmates enjoyed a warm and affectionate reunion at the Vatican with their classmate Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, at his weekly Wednesday audience on March 18.
Pope Leo happily greeted 10 of his former eighth-grade classmates from St. Mary of the Assumption School in Riverdale, Illinois, where Pope Leo XIV’s mother, Mildred Agnes Prevost, worked as a librarian when he was a child. The school was just a few blocks from the home where he grew up in Dolton, and he attended the school throughout his childhood.
The group came to Rome and the general audience to show their camaraderie and warmly greet their former classmate, now the 266th successor of St. Peter.
The group brought a 1969 class photo which the future pope had signed as “Bob” when he was 13 or 14 years old. At the class reunion on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, the group presented the old photo to the Pope, and he signed it again — this time as “Leo XIV.”
He was visibly moved to see his old classmates, smiling and laughing as he greeted each person one by one. Then he proudly held up their old graduation photo as they posed for another photo together, almost 60 years later.
Besides the photo, his classmates brought him the 2025 fall issue of Air Chicago, a color magazine produced for passengers coming through Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports, whose cover story was the election of a pope from Chicago.
Among the group was classmate Jerome Clemens, who pointed out the young “Bob” in the class photo, and Sherry Stone (née Blue), who shared with The Lansing Journal her fond memories of the young pope and her delighted surprise when he was elected:
He was a super nice guy, but not nerdy. I remember back then he made a comment that he wanted to grow up to be pope.
When he was in the conclave, I thought, “Could it be him? Could Bob be the new pope? No, probably not.” When I saw that it was him, I was just amazed. I was crying tears of joy.
After finishing eighth grade at St. Mary’s, young Prevost attended boarding school at St. Augustine Seminary High School in Michigan, graduating in 1973.
Watch the video of the heartfelt reunion here:
It’s an incredibly touching moment to see the joy of classmates together once again, now with an especially notable graduate.