The Rev. Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, wrote his doctoral thesis on the best way local Augustinian superiors exercise authority, the university rector said Friday. It’s a difficulty that is maybe newly relevant now that Prevost is the leader of the 1.4-billion strong Catholic Church.
The way religious superiors exercise authority has long been a subject of study for scholars. In recent years it has come under renewed scrutiny in light of cases where such authority has been abused: When a superior takes advantage of his or her authority, and the obedience that’s owed to her or him by underlings, for sexual or other ends.
It’s a difficulty that Prevost would have handled as a superior of the Augustinian religious order from 2001-2012, bishop of Chiclayo, Peru from 2014-2023, and as prefect of the Vatican’s dicastery for bishops, from 2023 until his election last week as pope. The Vatican office not only vets nominations of bishops world wide but in addition reviews cases of bishops who’re accused of abusing their authority.
The Rev. Thomas Joseph White, rector of the Dominican-run Pontifical St. Thomas Aquinas University where Prevost studied from 1981 to 1985, said Prevost’s canon law thesis demonstrated a “very mature and nuanced” understanding of spiritual life and authority, especially for somebody his age. Prevost would have been on the university, often known as the Angelicum, from around 26 to 30 years old.
White said that Prevost was specifically concerned about the difficulty of spiritual authority in light of the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council and the brand new legal code that the Catholic Church adopted in 1983, while Prevost was on the university. In an email, he said Prevost underscored that every one exercise of authority is supposed to be a selfless act of service for the common good.
White highlighted a line from the thesis drawing from St. Augustine’s concept of authority and repair: “There is not any room in Augustine’s concept of authority for one who’s self-seeking and in the hunt for power over others,” Prevost wrote.
“The exercise of authority in any Christian community requires the setting aside of all self-interest and a complete dedication to the great of the community,” he wrote. “This is the attitude which have to be adopted as the place to begin for an authentic understanding of the role of the local superior.”
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