The fathers of 2 Popes

Fr Robert Prevost (Leo XIV) blessing his parents

On this Father’s Day I share with you a few reflections on the fathers of two Popes. Pope Leo XIV recalls a conversation he had with his father Louis when he was younger. Young Robert told his father “Maybe it would be better I leave this life and get married; I want to have children, a normal life.” His father responded, by telling him that the intimacy between him and his wife was important, but so was the intimacy between a priest and the love of God.” The older Prevost joined the US Navy and became the executive officer of a tank landing ship and participated in the D-Day landings in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944. After the war he became principal in a Catholic high School, and was a catechist in his parish. He died on November 8, 1997.

Young Karol Wojtyla (John Paul II) with his father Karol Sr

Pope St. John Paul II owed his vocation to his father Karol Sr, as he explained: “My preparation for the priesthood in the seminary was in a certain sense preceded by the preparation I received in my family, thanks to the life and example of my parents. Above all I am grateful to my father, who became a widower at an early age. I had not yet made my First Holy Communion when I lost my mother: I was barely nine years old. … After her death and, later, the death of my older brother, I was left alone with my father, a deeply religious man. Day after day I was able to observe the austere way in which he lived. By profession he was a soldier and, after my mother’s death, his life became one of constant prayer. Sometimes I would wake up during the night and find my father on his knees, just as I would always see him kneeling in the parish church. We never spoke about a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was in a way my first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary.”