How Robert Prevost helped transform a diocese from ‘Opus Dei’ to ‘Liberation Theology’.
With the surprise nomination of Augustinian Fr. Robert Prevost as bishop of Peru’s fifth-largest city, Pope Francis sent a message to a fractured Peruvian episcopate.
At the time, Peru’s bishops were split between liberation-theology-minded progressives and theological conservatives influenced by Opus Dei.
And early into his pontificate, Francis decided to put his finger on the scales by naming an outsider to take over what had long been considered a conservative stronghold in the northern Peruvian city of Chiclayo.
“This was considered an Opus Dei diocese and Pope Francis wanted to cut that and let them know: ‘No, this is not an Opus Dei diocese. This is a diocesan diocese and as pope I can name whoever I want,’ ” said Bishop Dan Turley, the longtime bishop of Chulucanas, just north of Chiclayo.
In 2013, Prevost returned to his native Chicago after serving two terms as head of the worldwide Augustinian religious order in Rome. In that role, he oversaw a global organization of some 3,000 friars, traveling to nearly 50 countries where the order is present.
Upon leaving that role, he celebrated Mass in Rome with the recently elected Francis. Prevost later shared that the pope told him at the end of the Mass to get some rest.
“He gave me a few months and then he named me bishop of Chiclayo,” Prevost said in March 2025. “I don’t know when the rest will come, but here we are.”
Whereas bishops are named through an opaque process managed primarily through the Vatican’s representative to the country, Cardinal Pedro Ricardo Barreto Jimeno of Huncayo and Archbishop Héctor Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte of Trujillo both asked Francis to make Prevost a bishop in Peru since he had already served as a missionary in the country for more than a decade.
Continue reading at National Catholic Reporter