Alejandro Moral Antón, leader of the Augustinian order, found his cellphone buzzing incessantly, jolting him awake during a night filled with calls. Awake since 2:30 a.m., he was busy fielding inquiries from around the globe, eager to explain how the order that formed Pope Leo XIV would influence his papacy.
One such call came from his dentist, who had missed an appointment.
“Do you realize what’s happening?” Moral Antón told his dentist on a Monday afternoon in Rome. “The new pope is Augustinian!”
The world’s sudden fascination with the small order, which counts fewer than 3,000 members, compelled the affable 69-year-old Spaniard to distill the Augustinian spiritual ideals to their core: charity, truth, and unity—recited in Latin and then translated into Spanish.
Pope Leo XIV, formerly Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, holds U.S. citizenship as well as Peruvian nationality. However, his identity appears profoundly shaped by his ties to the Augustinians, a connection that began at age 14 and led to his ordination as an Augustinian priest in 1982. He later served as a missionary in Peru and ultimately directed the order from Rome for 12 years. This role helped him forge extensive international relationships that boosted his prominence during last week’s conclave that elected him pope.
As the first Augustinian friar to ascend to the papacy, the order anticipates that Pope Leo XIV will emphasize missionary outreach and the importance of broad consultation before decision-making—both central to Augustinian life.
“The Holy Father will undoubtedly draw inspiration from this pursuit of communion and dialogue,” said Pierantonio Piatti, Augustinian historian at the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences in the Vatican. This aligns with the concept of “synodality,” fulfilling the vision of Pope Francis for a Church that brings bishops and laity together to make major decisions.
Piatti added that another fundamental aspect of Augustinian spirituality is the “search for balance between action and contemplation, between contemplation and action.”
Due in part to its modest size, the Augustinian order fosters a tightly knit global community, with many friars having encountered Pope Leo XIV over the years.
“Even when we disagree on topics like politics, it doesn’t stop us from communicating,” said Allan Fitzgerald, an 84-year-old Augustinian priest and longtime professor at Villanova University near Philadelphia, where Pope Leo graduated in 1977. “In some ways, we mirror the United States, with a spectrum of views. Though we may avoid direct political debate, we can discuss what truly matters.”
Founded in 1244 when Pope Innocent IV united groups of hermits serving the Church into a community of friars, the Augustinians committed to a lifestyle of poverty combined with a blend of contemplation and pastoral service.
Named after one of early Christianity’s foremost theologians, Augustine of Hippo—born in present-day Algeria in the 4th century—the order draws on his teachings. Augustine is perhaps best known for his autobiographical work, Confessions, which partly recounts his conversion from a wayward youth to Christianity.
The order’s position within the Catholic Church was historically challenged by one of its most famous members, Martin Luther, whose calls for reform sparked the Protestant Reformation.
Augustine also authored a guide for religious life that became foundational for the Augustinian order, with members pledging to “live together in harmony, being of one mind and one heart on the way to God.” Pope Leo XIV’s new coat of arms reflects this heritage, bearing the Latin motto “In illo uno unum”—“In that One, we are one.”
Compared to larger orders such as the Jesuits and Franciscans, the Augustinians are less widely known, partly due to their personality and style, noted Fitzgerald.
“Jesuits are skilled at telling people who they are,” he said. “Augustinians are not as adept at self-promotion. We don’t usually broadcast our identity.”
Following his appointment as prior general of the order in 2001, Pope Leo XIV sought to share globally the missionary ideas and practices he had developed in Peru.
In a 2023 speech in Rome, he outlined the theological foundations of this mission, describing it as a means to fulfill the Church’s fundamental evangelizing duty. Without this perspective, charitable work risks becoming mere “humanitarian action,” important but not distinctively Christian.
“On the contrary, when we constantly remind each other that our main mission is evangelization, it doesn’t matter whether our resources are large or small, because the essential is already given,” he said.
“Evangelizing means, among other things, being willing to leave comfort zones and a comfortable bourgeois life,” he added, seemingly referencing his life-changing decision to leave the United States for a missionary assignment in northwestern Peru in 1985. This background likely influenced the cardinals’ deliberations during the conclave, as missionary outreach is a key element of Pope Francis’s vision.
On one occasion, Pope Leo XIV told Italian broadcaster RAI that he met “my religious family, the Augustinians,” as a teenager, prompting him to leave Chicago for an Augustinian boarding school in Michigan. There, he learned “the importance of friendship, the importance of community life.”
“I believe promoting communion in the Church is very important,” he explained in 2023 to Vatican News. “As an Augustinian, fostering unity and communion is fundamental to me.”
On Saturday, Pope Leo XIV made an unannounced visit to Our Lady of Good Counsel in Genazzano, an Augustinian sanctuary just outside Rome. On Monday, he invoked Saint Augustine in remarks to journalists at the Vatican, acknowledging that the current times are challenging, difficult to navigate, and hard to convey to the public.
“They demand that each of us, in our various roles and services, never succumb to mediocrity,” he said. “Saint Augustine reminds us when he said, ‘Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times.’”
Citing one of the saint’s sermons about how people can choose to make the best of difficult circumstances, Moral Antón said, “It is up to us to live well to change the times.”
“We need to reflect, we need to pause,” he added. “Because we live well—we eat well, enjoy pleasures—but are we happy? People often say, ‘I’m not happy.’ Then let’s search for happiness—inside—and then change.”
Moral Antón, who missed his dental appointment on Monday, was seated in a small room at the Augustinian College of Saint Monica, perched on a hillside overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica, where Pope Leo XIV has spent years playing tennis on a court with views of the iconic dome. Both men, who are the same age, studied together decades ago; Moral Antón served as the pope’s deputy when he led the order and later succeeded him as its head.
Since Pope Leo XIV’s election, Augustinian friars have shared stories of past encounters with him during his travels. A vicar from Kenya sent Moral Antón photographs from a trip he and the pope made to the African country many years ago.
“Being Augustinian means being quite open,” Moral Antón said, noting that compared to other orders, theirs has “no very strict rules.”
“It’s about eternal friendship, friends wanting to walk together, seeking together with friends,” he said. “Wanting to live in the world, life, but with friends. With people who love you and whom you love.”
“It’s not always achieved,” he added, “but, well, that’s the ideal.”
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