Robert Prevost, the cardinal who was just elected as Pope Leo XIV, studied under a pioneer in Jewish-Catholic relations when he attended seminary in Chicago.

Rev. John T. Pawlikowski, who taught for nearly half a century at the Catholic Theological Union until his retirement in 2017, co-founded and directed the school’s Catholic-Jewish Studies Program and also served four terms on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Leo graduated from the school in 1982.

“I do remember him as a pretty bright student,” Pawlikowski said after Leo's election. He added, “My experience of him was he’s a very open-minded person who’s very much in the context of Vatican II.”

He was referring to a pivotal development in Catholic-Jewish relations: when the church, in 1965, officially repudiated antisemitism and stated that the Jewish people were not responsible for Jesus’ death. While Leo largely served in areas with few Jews, he rose to prominence in an era of blossoming Catholic-Jewish relations.