Pope Leo XIV Competed in Speech and Debate

Published in CBS News.

Chicago native Robert Prevost is now the first pope ever from the United States. He chose Leo XIV as his papal name.

People who knew him in his early days remember a friendly young man who had a calling. One of his high school classmates was Bob Schick of Walpole. 

Robert Prevost is everywhere in Schick’s 1973 yearbook and now, in images around the world. 

“When I saw the picture (I thought) is that that Bob Prevost? I saw the picture and yes it was,” Schick told WBZ-TV. 

Schick was a freshman at St. Augustine’s Seminary High School in Holland, Michigan when Prevost was a senior at the boarding school.

“So, you had a lot of freshman kids there who were really scared to be away from home. And Bob was one of the guys, one of the seniors, who took people under his wing,” Schick said. 

With just 100 students in the school, and only 13 in Prevost’s graduating class, Schick says it was a brotherhood and Prevost was a natural leader. 

“He was the valedictorian. He was the student body president. He was in charge of speech and debate,” Schick said. “Editor in chief of the yearbook that I’m holding.” 

He was also in the spirit club. 

“There he is. He wasn’t the biggest guy, kind of where you’d expect him to be. Holding everybody else up,” Schick said, looking at a photo Prevost in a pyramid with six other classmates in the yearbook.