SAN DIEGO — Within hours of the election of U.S. Cardinal Robert F. Prevost as Pope Leo XIV, Augustinian Father Gary Sanders emailed him.
About three hours later, he received a response.
“Thanks for your message, Gary! You are often in my thoughts and prayers, and I only ask that you please pray for me!” the pope wrote to his fellow Augustinian, before signing off as “Bob.”
Father Sanders, a former Augustinian provincial in California who has considered Pope Leo a friend for about 45 years, was among many San Diegans celebrating the results of the recent papal conclave.
Official diocesan congratulations came in a statement from Bishop Michael Pham, administrator of the Diocese of San Diego.
“It is with great joy we greet the news that the world has a new pope!” Bishop Pham wrote.
“Pope Leo XIV has split his priestly life between his beloved Chicago, assignments in Rome and serving as a missionary and later a diocesan bishop in Peru,” he continued.
“We ask that all the People of God in the Diocese of San Diego pray for Pope Leo, to give him the wisdom, the strength and all the other gifts needed to guide our Church in these challenging times,” the bishop wrote.
James Horne, principal of St. Augustine High School, said that news of Pope Leo’s election had “ignited our campus with an excitement that is palpable.”
Pope Leo, then Father Prevost, has celebrated Masses at the school, most recently in September of 2012 to mark its 90th anniversary. (The future pontiff returned to San Diego as bishop of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, to ordain Augustinian Father Carlos Medina to the priesthood on June 11, 2016, at St. Patrick Church in North Park.)
“The selection of a new pope is not a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Horne. “But it is certainly the case that the selection of the first American pope and an Augustinian with deep connections to the school where you minister/teach/coach is indeed a once-in-a-lifetime event.”
Augustinian Father Max Villeneuve, chaplain at St. Augustine High School, was in his office on the morning of May 8, watching a livestream of the announcement of the new pope.
“I am … so very excited to have an Augustinian as our Holy Father,” he said. “We knew that it was a possibility, as (former Cardinal Prevost) checks so many boxes and has an impressive resume. But, until they announce the name, you think it is a long shot at best.”
Father Villeneuve first met then Father Prevost in Chicago in 2014, when the future pope was his formation director for about three months during his first year as a seminarian.
“He is calm, serene, grounded and also very pragmatic and personable,” said Father Villeneuve. “The same man I have sat around the breakfast table with is the same man that was on the balcony of the loggia. This, I believe, comes from our Augustinian concept of interiority, which encourages us to seek God in the depths of our hearts. St. Augustine teaches, ‘Lord, let me know myself, that I may know you’; this is constantly resounding in Leo.”
Like Father Sanders, Father Villeneuve confirms that Pope Leo was still checking his emails after the papal election.
“He has replied to many Augustinian brothers, who wished him well and never expected a response,” he said. “We should have known better. He was famous for being a fast texter and replier to emails.”
“I have never printed off an email for safekeeping before,” he added, “but I think I will have to print off the one he sent me.”
Father Sanders told The Southern Cross that he was just leaving the gym when he heard that white smoke was billowing from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, announcing a pope’s election.
At the time, Father Sanders accepted the conventional wisdom that, as a U.S. cardinal, his friend had no chance of being elected. But, when he realized that the conventional wisdom had been wrong, he was “absolutely elated.”
He recalled the atmosphere during dinner with his fellow Augustinian friars that evening.
“We were higher than kites …that we knew a pope and that the pope was one of us,” he said.
Father Sanders said that he first met the man who is now Pope Leo about 45 years ago in San Francisco. Father Sanders, then a young priest with only about five years in ministry, gave a tour of the city to the future pope, who was then only a seminarian.
Over the decades that followed, Father Sanders and Pope Leo’s paths would cross many times, including when the former’s service as California provincial overlapped with the latter’s term as prior general (2001-2013), the top leadership post in the Order of St. Augustine, based at the Augustinians’ international headquarters across the street from St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Father Sanders also attended Father Prevost’s consecration as bishop on Dec. 12, 2014, in the Diocese of Chiclayo, and the consistory on Sept. 30, 2023, at which he was elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope Francis.
“He certainly is … a son of St. Augustine, no doubt about that,” Father Sanders said.
He recounted how, as a cardinal serving as head of the Dicastery for Bishops, a Vatican department that oversees the selection of bishops worldwide, Pope Leo would drop by the nearby Augustinian headquarters, joining his Augustinian brothers for common prayer and morning Mass, before reporting to the office.
Father Sanders described the new pope as “a wonderful, holy man, smart, and a person of prayer,” “a hard worker” who is “dedicated to the poor.”
“His demeanor is calm and, yet, when he laughs, it’s very hearty,” he said.
“My world is a better place because he’s in it,” Father Sanders said of his friend, “but the Church is a better place because he’s the pope.”
