Pope Leo ‘met the global church’ at Catholic Theological Union

When Pope Leo XIV attended Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park, he was only about 10 miles from his boyhood home, but that didn’t stop him from learning about the church all over the world.

“Pope Leo met the global church here,” said Steven Millies, director of the Bernardin Center at CTU and professor of public theology.

Founded in 1968 by a consortium of men’s religious communities to provide seminary education in an urban neighborhood, adjacent to a world-class university, CTU has long provided education to students from all over the world.

Its alumni minister in 60 countries, said Dominican Sister Barbara Reid, CTU’s president, many of them in positions of leadership.

But, Sister Barbara said, “we were so taken by surprise” by the announcement of the former Cardinal Robert Prevost as the new pontiff on May 8.

“We are bursting with pride and joy,” she said.

Pope Leo XIV studied at CTU from 1977 to 1982 as a seminarian for the Augustinian order. After graduating with his Master of Divinity degree, he studied canon law in Rome.

Sister Barbara’s time at the school did not overlap the future pope’s, but she came to know him when he spent time in Chicago as the prior provincial for his order, and as the director of formation for Augustinian seminarians. He also served on the board of trustees, she said.

“And there were discussions about him teaching about canon law here, but Peru got him first,” she said.

His education at CTU would have offered good preparation for his role ministering to the poor in northern Peru, she said.

“There’s a strong emphasis on mission and the global church here,” Sister Barbara said. “Here, we do formation for the whole person, academically, spiritually, pastorally and in humanity.”

She spoke before a May 13 Mass of Thanksgiving for Pope Leo XIV, at which participants were invited to sign cards with their prayers and good wishes for the new pope. Sister Barbara planned to deliver them to Rome when she traveled there with a delegation of local Augustinians for Pope Leo’s May 18 installation, as she did when he was made a cardinal in 2023.

Augustinian Father John Lydon, director of formation for the Augustinians in Hyde Park, was also on that trip, he said, although he didn’t expect to meet Pope Leo XIV — with whom he shared a home from 1990 to 1999 in Trujillo, Peru, when the two young priests were assigned at the same parish.

Lydon said he remembers Pope Leo XIV as someone who stood with the poor, and respected the dignity of poor people, something that wasn’t common among the Peruvian authorities during a decade of terrorism and dictatorial rule.

“Those were hard years in Peru,” he said, noting that Pope Leo XIV set up parish soup kitchens to help people coming from the mountains, fleeing terrorism, with nothing.

As much as CTU formed the future pope, so did the Peruvian people, Lydon said.

“They formed both of us as pastors,” Lydon said.

Sister Barbara hopes, she said, that the election of Pope Leo XIV will help shine a light on Catholic Theological Union.

“Maybe we can stop being the best-kept secret of the church in Chicago or in the United States,” she said.

CTU has alumni around the world because it has students from all over the world. About a third of the roughly 200 students now enrolled are international students, she said.

Millies told members of the media that those students come from about 40 countries. Roughly half of them are seminarians studying for the priesthood in one of the member religious congregations; the rest are laypeople, including women and men religious, studying for non-ordained church ministry.