Since his election as Pope Leo XIV, Catholics around the world have been getting to know the new pontiff through his homilies, audiences, and public appearances. Yet long before the white cassock and the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square, there was simply a young Augustinian arriving in Rome with a suitcase and a vocation.
A new documentary, Leone a Roma ("Leo in Rome"), released by the Editorial Directorate of the Dicastery for Communication, invites viewers to step back into those formative years, as shared by Vatican News. Through interviews, archive footage, and photographs, it retraces the years Robert Francis Prevost spent in the Eternal City after arriving in 1981 to study for his licentiate in Canon Law.
The timing alone places him at a fascinating moment in the Church's history. Prevost arrived in Rome shortly after Pope John Paul II returned to the Vatican following the assassination attempt that shocked the world. While one pope was recovering, another future pope was quietly beginning a chapter of his own life that nobody could have imagined would one day lead to the Chair of St. Peter.
Rather than searching for dramatic revelations, the documentary appears content to do something far more interesting: It asks the people who knew Robert Prevost what sort of man he was before the world knew his name.
One memory, in particular, stands out. Fr. Ciro Musiello remembers the future pope as "very reserved," but also as someone who had "a gift of creating a sense of community among the brothers." It is a combination that is oddly revealing. After all, reserve is not always associated with someone who naturally draws people together, yet those who knew him describe precisely that quiet gift.
As the documentary unfolds, a portrait gradually emerges of a man shaped not only by his studies, but by fraternity, prayer, and everyday community life. It suggests that many of the qualities Catholics are already beginning to recognize in Pope Leo XIV were not suddenly acquired on the day of his election. They had been taking shape for decades.
The film eventually brings viewers full circle, returning to the moment the world first met Pope Leo XIV. Watching the joy of those who had known him long before the white smoke, and hearing the new Pope's first words once again, gives those familiar scenes an added depth.
Without giving too much away, it is a fitting conclusion to a documentary that reminds us something we can easily forget: popes are not made overnight. Long before the balcony, there are years of quiet faithfulness, friendships, study, and service that prepare them for the moment the whole world finally learns their name.
