The Mother Whose Catholic Faith Inspired the Future Pope

New York Times

11-05-2025

Her friends called her Millie. The future pope called her Ma.
Mildred Prevost, whose youngest son, Robert, would one day take the name Pope Leo XIV, cut her own extraordinary path of ambition, talent and religious devotion through her hometown of Chicago.
Born Mildred Agnes Martinez, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in education in 1947 and attended graduate school at DePaul University, an academic path that was unusual for women at that time. She waited until she was in her mid-30s, Cook County records show, to marry Louis Prevost, who was eight years her junior. Mrs. Prevost was in her late 30s and early 40s when she had children, three boys born in a span of just over four years.
An enthusiastic performer, a regular in costumed skits and plays at school fund-raisers, and an accomplished singer, Mrs. Prevost once recorded her own rendition of 'Ave Maria,' a hymn of considerable difficulty for an amateur.
'That was her trademark song,' her oldest son, who was also named Louis, said in an interview on Saturday. 'She would belt it out.'
Most dominant in Mrs. Prevost's life were her family and deep Catholic faith, people who knew her said, the latter a lifelong conviction that made her a central force behind Robert's path to the priesthood and beyond.
Mrs. Prevost died in 1990, after being diagnosed with cancer and enduring chemotherapy treatments. But her sons will reunite in Rome on the week of Mother's Day, days after the youngest of the three was elected leader of the world's 1.4 billion Roman Catholics.
Robert Prevost spent his childhood in the Chicago suburb of Dolton, immersed in the Catholic culture that revolved around the family parish, St. Mary of the Assumption, on the city's South Side.
Catholic school was a generational family tradition. Mildred Prevost graduated from Immaculata High School on the North Side in 1929, according to newspaper records, and was the youngest daughter in a large Catholic family. (Unlike her son Robert and nearly all her eventual neighbors on the South Side, she was a Cubs fan.)
It was clear from the time he was a young boy that Robert Prevost would become a priest, his family said, and his mother was a fervent supporter of that desire. When he wanted to attend a minor seminary in Michigan for high school, she and his father allowed him to go.
'They gave him a lot of confidence,' said Bishop Daniel Turley, who met the future pope when he was a teenager, fresh out of the Michigan school. 'When he went into the Augustinian seminary, he did it with the encouragement of his loving mother.'
Bishop Turley recalled meeting Mrs. Prevost — close to a half-century ago — and being struck by her pride in her young son and her own intense Catholic conviction.
'She was practically a saint,' he said. 'She was just one of those people you meet and you feel the presence of God.'
Mrs. Prevost made sure to drill her sons in practical matters, the younger Louis Prevost said. He remembers standing in the family kitchen as his mother explained the steps of a recipe, making any one of her favorites: goulash, chicken Lo Mein, homemade pizza or roast beef.
'We learned how to cook, we learned how to clean, we learned how to iron clothes,' he said. 'She taught us all the skills needed to be on your own and support yourself.'
But Mrs. Prevost also appeared to have been driven by intellectual interests. She volunteered in Catholic school libraries. In 1950, she reviewed 'Helena,' a novel by Evelyn Waugh, for a book talk with a local group of Catholic women, and according to The Chicago Tribune, in 1952 participated in a forum titled 'The Catholic Woman in the Professional World.'
'Our whole family was geared toward education,' Louis Prevost said. 'I think she may have wanted to be a teacher one day, but that never went to fruition because she got married and had kids.'
She and her husband, who died in 1997, probably could not have imagined that their youngest son would someday become pope, said John Prevost, another brother of the pope who lives in the Chicago suburbs.
'They would be on Cloud 9,' he said.