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Father Chori Seraiah is a Roman Catholic priest and convert from The Anglican Church in America (ACA). He was born in 1967 in Garden Grove, California. He attended Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California, and Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida, and then spent 16 years in protestant ministry before converting to the Catholic Church. It was during his years as an Anglican priest while he was studying Church history and biblical theology that he decided to join the Catholic Church. He then attended St. Mary's Seminary in Houston, Texas for his preparation for holy orders. He was ordained to the priesthood (with the special permission of Pope Benedict XVI) on July 8th, 2012. He is now a priest of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, and says that he loves his vocation(s). For the first four years of his service in the Catholic Church, he served in the Diocese of Des Moines until he was called by Bishop Lopes to serve as the founding pastor of St. George Catholic Church in Republic, Missouri. He and his wife Catherine have five children. You can read his blog here: old blog & new blog.
His Excellency Steven J. Lopes is the first bishop of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter and pastor to all its members and clergy in the United States and Canada.
Steven Joseph Lopes was born in 1975 in Fremont, Calif. to Barbara Jane and (the late) Dr. José de Oliveira Lopes. His father was Portuguese and his mother is Polish. José emigrated to the U.S. in the early 1960s and became an American citizen in 1970. Barbara Jane was born and raised in Detroit, where much of her family still resides.
Pope Leo XIV is the first Augustinian Pope, and the second Roman Pontiff - after Pope Francis - from the Americas. Unlike Jorge Mario Bergoglio, however, the 69-year-old Robert Francis Prevost is from the northern part of the continent, though he spent many years as a missionary in Peru before being elected head of the Augustinians for two consecutive terms.
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The new Bishop of Rome was born on September 14, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois, to Louis Marius Prevost, of French and Italian descent, and Mildred Martínez, of Spanish descent. He has two brothers, Louis Martín and John Joseph.
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Prevost obtained his licentiate in 1984 and the following year, while preparing his doctoral thesis, was sent to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Piura, Peru.
Over the course of eleven years, he served as prior of the community (1988–1992), formation director (1988–1998), and instructor for professed members (1992–1998), and in the Archdiocese of Trujillo as judicial vicar (1989–1998) and professor of Canon Law, Patristics, and Moral Theology at the Major Seminary “San Carlos y San Marcelo.”
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On September 26, 2015, he was appointed Bishop of Chiclayo by Pope Francis and created him Cardinal in the Consistory of September 30, 2023.
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He was elected Pope on May 8th, 2025.
