Ever since Pope Leo XIV stepped onto to the loggia above St. Peter’s Square May 8, Chicago-area Catholics have been bursting with pride over the Chicago-born pontiff.
Now the rest of the world can learn about the former Robert Francis Prevost’s Chicago roots, from his modest boyhood home in Dolton to his Augustinian formation, with “Leo From Chicago,” a 52-minute documentary produced by Vatican Media.
The film was produced in conjunction with the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Apostolado El Sembrador Nueva Evangelización, a Spanish-language Catholic TV apostolate.
Father Felipe Herrera-Espaliat, one of the producers from Vatican Media, said the documentary is something of a companion to “León de Perú,” which documents the pope’s time as a missionary priest and a bishop in Peru. That film was released in June 20.
Following its release, “people started to ask, ‘Why don’t you complete the documentary by going to the States, where he grew, where his roots are?” Herrera-Espaliat said. “We already knew his pastoral life. We wanted to know where his vocation came from, what was his family like, what were his brothers like? We wanted to know his friends from school, his friends from formation, the Augustinians.”
Herrera-Espaliat was in his native Chile in July, following his mother’s death, when team at Vatican Media called him and suggested he spend another few weeks in Chile, coordinating preproduction work on the Chicago project from a time zone closer to Chicago.
The team had been in contact with Cardinal Cupich, who was happy to offer the help of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and Brian Brach, senior manager of multimedia technology in the archdiocese’s Radio and Television Office, stepped in to help make local connections.
Brach, a graduate of Providence Catholic High School in suburban New Lenox, already knew many of the pope’s Augustinian brothers, including school president Father John Merkelis, who attended the now-closed St. Augustine Seminary High School in Holland, Michigan, with the future pope.
The production team scheduled interviews with Augustinians and friends here in the Chicago area; with former teachers from Catholic Theological Union, where Pope Leo did his graduate studies in theology; with Augustinians and friends from Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in math; and with his two brothers, John, who lives in the Chicago area, and Louis, who lives in Florida.
What emerged over about 11 days of filming across three states, Herrera-Espaliat said, was a portrait that agreed with what the world has learned about Pope Leo.
“It confirmed that he is someone who is a very intelligent person,” Herrera-Espaliat said. “He’s very, very serious. Not serious in his relationships — he’s able to laugh with people — but serious in his responsibilities. He is someone who listens. He listens, and listens and listens when someone needs to talk, and when he needs to make a decision.”
Herrera-Espaliat said he especially enjoyed speaking with Mary Donar-Reale, a friend of Pope Leo from their shared time at Villanova. They met, she said, through a student pro-life group, and, while the future pope was very committed to his Augustinian vocation, he made many close friends, both men and women.
Pope Leo’s brothers Louis and John, his Augustinian brothers, and his friends all shared anecdotes and photos.
Asked if anything surprised him, Herrera-Espaliat said, “His trousers.”
As a teenager in the 1970s, he explained, the former Bob Prevost appears in photos wearing the plaid trousers that were fashionable at the time.
“They were just normal, typical,” he said.
Brach, along with Clinton Cottrell, a multimedia specialist in the archdiocesan radio and Television office, and Henry Van Zytveld, a former Gabriel Fellow in the office, traveled with the team and did much of the camera work.
“It felt like they wanted to know who he was a person,” said Brach, an associate producer and cinematographer on the project. “They wanted to know who he was before he was pope, before he was a priest and a bishop.”
Brach said the more he heard, the more he felt connected to Pope Leo, a fellow South Sider and White Sox fan.
Much of what is in the documentary, from the scenes of the L to shots of the seat Pope Leo sat in at Rate Field during Game 1 of the 2005 World Series, might be familiar to Chicago-area Catholics, but the film was meant for a much wider audience, Herrera-Espaliat said.
“This is a documentary prepared by the Vatican,” he said. “It has a very wide and open point of view. We are not talking to the Americans, we are talking to the entire world. … Everyone was saying very clearly that what he is today is who he is and what he learned in the U.S., in Peru, in the Vatican and all over the world. It is synthesis of what he learned through all the years.”
Now, Herrera-Espaliat said, he has interviewed 68 people who know the pope, although he has yet to meet him.
“I feel like when I do, I will know him a bit,” Herrera-Espaliat said.
Watch “Leo from Chicago” at vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-11/leo-from-chicago-the-documentary.html.