Retracing history: a new insight into Pope Leo's father as a D-Day marine hero

 ROME - Louis Marius Prevost, father of Pope Leo XIV, decided to join the Navy in 1942 and then retired from the Naval Reserve in 1956. Tv2000 has acquired images of documents kept and made available by NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration in St. Louis, Missouri. NARA is responsible for the preservation of the official personal files of the US military, including that of the father of the first American pontiff in history.

 Vincenzo Grienti's report for Tg2000, a news program, retraces the years in which Louis Marius Prevost, born on 28 July 1920, applied to enter the Navy's V-7 accelerated training program. Among the letters of references is that of Father Murphy, parish priest of the church of St. Thomas the Apostle on Kimbark Avenue: “He is a good Catholic and a young man of good character and stable habits”, we read in the letter written in pen by the religious man.

 “He is a conscientious, loyal person and an honest worker”, writes the editor manager of the Hyde Park Herald, one of the oldest newspapers in the Chicago community. Leo XIV's father attended the Midshipmen's School in New York and earned the rank of ensign in the United States Naval Reserve on November 24, 1943.

 Tg2000, traces Prevost's military career, through correspondence with the National Archives in St. Louis, from which it is possible to read the serial number 310935 of the officer who was assigned on board the USS LST-286 unit, a troop, truck and tank landing ship. In late 1943, Ensign Prevost left for Europe to participate alongside thousands of young American, Canadian and British servicemen in the June 1944 Normandy landings to rid Europe of the grip of Nazi-fascism. Also aboard LST-286, Prevost also took part in Operation Dragoon, in southern France, in August of 1944. He was highly appreciated by his superiors for his abilities, his spirit of self-sacrifice and his sense of duty and for this he was promoted to lieutenant. Among the documents there was also the ‘service satisfaction certificate’ awarded on July 20, 1946 by the President of the United States Harry Truman through James Vincent Forrestal, Secretary of the United States Navy and future US Secretary of Defense.

 After spending 15 months abroad, Lieutenant Prevost returned to the United States. He was principal of Brookwood School District 167 and Mount Carmel Elementary School in Chicago as well as a catechist. On January 25, 1949 he married Mildred Agnes Martinez with whom he had three children: John Joseph Prevost, Louis Martin Prevost and Robert Francis Prevost, future priest and bishop who ascended to the papal throne on May 8, 2025, exactly eighty years after the Victory in Europe day which marked the end of the Second World War.

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