Long Drives and Short Homilies: How Father Bob Became Pope Leo

A résumé of deep religious education, frontline pastoral experience, parish management and Vatican governance — along with a nudge from Pope Francis — put Robert Prevost on the fast track.Father Robert Prevost told the Peruvian soldiers to back off. It was the mid-1990s, and the troops, armed to the teeth, had stopped and boarded a minibus carrying the American priest and a group of young Peruvian seminarians. The soldiers tried to forcibly recruit the men. Citing a law that exempted clerics from military service, Father Prevost told the soldiers, “No, these young men are going to be priests, they cannot...