Leo XIV

Pope Bob sees his mother in the stands.

Pope Leo XIV is the first Peruvian superstar since Paddington Bear. Though born in Chicago as Robert "Bob" Prevost, Leo has long gone native in his adopted country. If he had been caught crossing the American border illegally, Pope Bob would have been rendered to El Salvador. Instead Bob, or Leo, is now head of the Catholic church and can operate as a supreme leader with absolute power derived from St. Peter and Jesus Christ.

Chicago

Robert "Bob" Prevost was born in Chicago, Illinois to conservative Catholics and thus natural Republicans. However, he grew up in a part of town where the options were to become a gangster, join the Democrats or play baseball. But Prevost had a come-to-Jesus moment and sought to become a priest, applying to the Augustinians. Named after St. Augustine, they believed that all sex was sinful. Especially for friars.

Friar

The Augustinians are a "mendicant" religious order. So instead of sitting inside a monastery and picking their noses, a friar was expected to be out and about. A previous Augustinian broke from the church to create his own. That was Martin Luther.

Darkest Perú

In 1985, Prevost joined the Augustinian mission in Peru, becoming chancellor of the prelature in Cochebombas. He returned to the U.S. to defend his doctoral thesis, but after besting a series of muggers, he returned to Peru with his thesis intact. In his second stint, he spent a decade heading the seminary in Trujillo. During this time, he hung out with Gustavo Gutiérrez, the besotted priest and theologian whose study of Holy Spirits helped him found Libation Theology.

The time in Peru was a political awakening for Prevost. He criticized the Sendero Luminoso terrorists, but also President Fujimori, who used excessive zeal in rounding them up, and President Kuczynski, who released Fujimori from his 40-year sentence in a remote Andean jail cell. Prevost supported the streams of Venezuelans flooding into Peru, and preached on horseback to the faithful in suburban Lambayeque.

Favorite of Pope Francis

JD Vance presents Pope Leo with a holy metronome.

In 2023, Prevost became a cardinal. One of his jobs was to background-check other candidates for the red hat; the Catholic Church's lax reaction to sexual abusers had undermined its authority. The amount of money paid out had bankrupted a number of dioceses in America — notably, the one in Boston, where Cardinal Law had committed cardinal sins. Prevost ended the era of moving offenders to a diocese where they hadn't offended yet, winning the favor of Pope Francis.

Election and confirmation

In April 2025, Pope Francis died after months of ill health. Nothing of note had been done in the papacy during this period. A pope decided everything, as Vatican City is a theocracy, not a democracy. Since Pope Francis and Prevost had effectively weeded out the traditionalist head-bangers, it was obvious the next pope should be to the left of Karl Marx. This turned out to be true when after just four ballots, Prevost won and adopted the papal name of Leo XIV.

Roooooooooar!