The photo shows a man wearing a simple, short-sleeved white shirt and gray pants with a bishop’s cross around his neck standing in floodwaters up to the shins of his black rubber boots.
A somber look rests on his face as he scans a village inundated with high brown water. In another photo, his head hangs low as he walks with two men and a woman down a street turned canal.
The images of then-Bishop Robert Francis Prevost in the muddy aftermath of severe flooding in northern Peru in 2023 offer a glance at a man the world now knows as Pope Leo XIV.
Photos of “a pope in muddy boots” began circulating on social media shortly after Prevost, an Augustinian friar-turned-cardinal with both U.S. and Peruvian citizenship, was introduced in St. Peter’s Square as the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
The story behind the images tells of a pastor in close kinship with his community, said Manuel Alberto Huapaya Mendoza, secretary general of Caritas Peru, the national chapter of the Catholic church’s international aid and development organization Caritas Internationalis.
To continue reading this article, click here.
With thanks to the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) and Brian Roewe, where this article originally appeared.
