Her friends called her Millie. The future Pope called her ma.
Mildred Prevost, whose youngest son, Robert, would take the name Pope Leo XIV one day, would cut her own extraordinary path of ambition, talent and religious dedication through her hometown of Chicago.
Born Mildred Agnes Martinez, she obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Education in 1947 and went to the Graduate School at Depaul University, an academic path that was at that time unusual for women. She waited until she was in the mid -1930s, according to Cook County Records, to marry Louis Prevost, who was her junior for eight years. Mrs. Prevost was in the late 1930s and in early 40s when she had children, three boys born in a period of just over four years.
An enthusiastic artist, a fixed in costumed skits and plays at school fundrapers, and an accomplished singer, Mrs. Prevost once recorded her own interpretation of ‘Ave Maria’, a hymn of considerable difficulty for an amateur.
“That was her characteristic song,” said her eldest son, who was also called Louis, on Saturday in an interview. “She would pronounce it.”
The most dominant in Mrs. Prevost’s life was her family and deep Catholic faith, people who knew her, said, the latter a lifelong conviction that made her a central strength behind Robert’s path to priesthood and beyond.
Mrs. Prevost died in 1990, after the diagnosis of cancer and sustainable chemotherapy treatments. But her sons will reunite in Rome on the week of Mother’s Day, days after the youngest of the three chosen leader of the Roman Catholics in the world.
Robert Prevost spent his childhood in the suburb of Chicago van Dolton, immersed in the Catholic culture that revolved around the Familyish, St. Mary of the assumption, on the south side of the city.
The Catholic school was a generation tradition. Mildred Prevost graduated in 1929 from the Immaculata High School on the north side, according to newspaper records, and was the youngest daughter in a large Catholic family. (Unlike her son Robert and almost all her final neighbors on the south side, she was a Cubs fan.)
It was clear from the moment he was a young boy that Robert Prevost would become a priest, said his family, and his mother was an avid supporter of that desire. When he wanted to attend a small seminar in Michigan for high school, she and his father were admitted to him.
“They gave him a lot of confidence,” said Bishop Daniel Turley, who met the future Pope when he was a teenager, fresh from the Michigan school. “When he went to the Augustinian seminar, he did it with the encouragement of his loving mother.”
Bishop Turley remembered that Mrs. Prevost-Bijna had to get rid of half a century ago and was struck by her pride of her young son and her own intense Catholic conviction.
“She was practically a saint,” he said. “She was just one of those people you meet and you feel the presence of God.”
Mrs. Prevost caused her sons to drill in practical matters, said the younger Louis Prevost. He remembers that he was in the family kitchen while his mother explained the steps of a recipe and made one of her favorites: Goulash, Chicken Lo Mein, homemade pizza or roast beef.
“We learned how to cook, we learned how to clean, we learned how to iron clothes,” he said. “She taught us all the skills needed to be alone and to support yourself.”
But Mrs. Prevost also seemed to have been powered by intellectual interests. She offered herself in Catholic school libraries. In 1950, she assessed ‘Helena’, a novel by Evelyn Waugh, for a book review with a local group of Catholic women, and according to the Chicago TribuneParticipated in a forum entitled ‘The Catholic Woman in the Professional World’ in 1952.
“Our entire family focused on education,” said Louis Prevost. “I think one day she might want to be a teacher, but that never went out because she got married and had children.”
She and her husband, who died in 1997, probably could not have imagined that their youngest son ever would be pope, said John Prevost, another brother of the pope who lives in the suburbs of Chicago.
“They would be on Cloud 9,” he said.
Robert Chiarito contributed reporting.
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