Catholic Theological Union: Pope Leo's Seminary Formation
Pope Leo XIV: CTU Master of Divinity
Cardinal Robert Prevost, OSA— now Pope Leo XIV—, earned his Master of Divinity degree from CTU in 1982 and was ordained the following year.
CTU’s Master of Divinity (M. Div.) program prepares students for full-time professional ministry in the Roman Catholic Church, including ordination to the priesthood. Students at CTU study theology and ministry that is both grounded in tradition and engaged with current contexts.
Born in Chicago in 1955 to a multicultural family of Hispanic, French, and Italian heritage, Pope Leo XIV joined the Augustinians in 1977 and began his theological formation at CTU shortly thereafter. His early ministry took him to northern Peru, where he served as a pastor, educator, and canon law expert. His leadership trajectory led him from the Augustinian Province of Chicago to his appointment as Prior General of the worldwide Augustinian Order.
In 2014, Pope Francis appointed him Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, and in 2023, he was named Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and created Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Monica. President Barbara Reid, OP, joined Pope Leo at his consecration as Cardinal.
Welcome to Catholic Theological Union. I am Sr. Barbara Reid, a Dominican Sister of Grand Rapids Michigan and it is my great pleasure to serve as CTU’s seventh President. CTU is one of the largest schools of theology and ministry in the U.S., forming students from more than forty countries to be effective leaders in the Church.
In 1968, on the heels of the Second Vatican Council, the three men’s religious communities who founded CTU—Franciscans, Passionists, and Servites—followed the Spirit’s lead to create a new model of seminary formation: in the midst of the city, near a major university, and in a neighborhood where there could be close ecumenical and interreligious engagement.
Today, the number of men’s communities who are the corporate owners of CTU has grown to twenty-three. Within two years of its founding, CTU expanded its mission to include women religious and lay women and men, who prepare together with men religious for collaborative ministries in the global church.
Our graduates can be found in more than sixty countries throughout the world in myriad ministries, as leaders in parishes and diocesan offices, teachers and administrators in schools, hospital chaplains, campus ministers, leaders in justice ministries, and in interreligious and ecumenical work, and much more.
The strength of our academic programs at both the Masters and Doctoral levels is upheld by our stellar faculty, who are not only extraordinary teachers, but also world-renowned scholars who publish extensively. In addition to academic formation, faculty and staff place equal emphasis on human, spiritual, and pastoral formation of our students
The Spark
Inspired by an address at Rockefeller Chapel of Cardinal Leo Josef Suenens, a leader of the Second Vatican Council, the Dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School urged that a Catholic school of theology be founded in Hyde Park
Opening The Doors
After a summer of political turbulence in Chicago, CTU launched a bold new collaborative initiative, beginning its classes in the educational center of Sinai Temple in September 1968.
Beginning A Catholic-Jewish Studies Program with Rabbi Hayim Perelmuter as charter faculty member joining Rev. John Pawlikowski, OSM as co-founders of the program. (1968)
Alacia Lakey, a graduate of Yale University, was the first lay woman student at CTU. She would be the first of a growing stream of lay women and religious to join CTU.
1978
CTU In The Holy Land Two of its outstanding biblical professors, Rev. Carroll Stuhmueller, C.P. and Rabbi Hayim Perelmuter, created a semester long program for CTU students in the Holy Land. 1981
Recognizing the growing importance of the Hispanic community in the United States Church, CTU launched a program in Hispanic studies, one of the first in the country.
1987
The Vatican Visits! At the direction of the newly elected Pope John Paul II, the Vatican initiated a visitation of all U.S. seminaries. With the support of Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, CTU won full approval of its structure and mission. 1988
The Augustus Tolton Program In collaboration with the Archdiocese of Chicago, CTU began a scholarship and formation program for African-American lay ministers serving in Chicago.
1992
CTU Honors Cardinal Joseph Bernardin As a true friend of CTU, the school awarded an honorary doctorate to Cardinal Bernardin on the 25th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. In his remarks, the Cardinal asked CTU to continue to support the pastoral mission of the Council. 1992
The Oscar Romero Program Matching its innovative Augustus Tolton program, CTU, in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Chicago, initiated a scholarship and formation program for lay Hispanic ministers. 1995
The Bernardin Center As part of its first major capital campaign “Bold and Faithful,” CTU established the Cardinal Bernardin Center to promote his legacy and signature issues. The Cardinal himself, shortly before his death, wrote the charter for the Center.
1997
Rev. Ted Hesburgh At CTU! With the blessing and encouragement of the famed president of the University of Notre Dame, the popular sabbatical program he began moved from South Bend to CTU and Chicago. 1999
The Catholic-Muslim Studies Program Supported by the generosity of James and Catherine Denny, CTU inaugurated a unique program in Islamic studies to promote dialogue and mutual respect between Christians and Muslims. Dr. Scott Alexander was appointed its founding director. 1999
Peacebuilders Initiative With a major grant from the Lilly Endowment, CTU’s Bernardin Center created a program for high school students, introducing them to rich social justice teaching and practice of Catholicism. 2006
Making A Place For Faith With a major grant from the Lilly Endowment, CTU’s Bernardin Center created a program for high school students, introducing them to rich social justice teaching and practice of Catholicism. 2007
Finding Common Ground One of the programs closest to the heart of Cardinal Bernardin’s was the Catholic Common Ground initiative, designed to reduce polarity within the Catholic community. In 2007 this signature program found its home in CTU’s Bernardin Center.
2011
Center For Study Of Consecrated Life Building on its history of collaboration among religious communities, CTU inaugurated a Center devoted to the study and advancement of religious life. 2019
The First Woman President On January 1, 2021, Sr. Barbara Reid, OP, became the first woman president in the history of CTU, serving as the eighth president of Catholic Theological Union and the first woman religious to lead the school of theology and ministry
THE BOTTOM LINE: THIS FUTURE POPE RECEIVED A HIGHLY UNUSUAL (M.DIV) SEMINARY EDUCATION IN A VERY INNOVATIVE INSTITUTION FOUNDED BY MEN'S RELIGIOUS ORDERS IN A VERY URBAN AND ECUMENICAL CONTEXT. THAT IS UNLIKE 99.999... PERCENT OF PRIESTS AND BISHOPS.
THIS IS A VERY MODERN POST VATICAN II PERSON FROM THE VERY BEGINNING OF HIS PRIESTLY AND RELIGOUS FORMATION.
Theological reflection is therefore called to a turning point, to a paradigm shift, to a “courageous cultural revolution” that commits it, first and foremost, to being a fundamentally contextual theology, capable of reading and interpreting the Gospel in the conditions in which men and women live daily, in different geographical, social, and cultural environments. —Pope Francis
he election of Pope Leo XIV has excited much attention for the fact of his being the first pope born in the United States, as it rightly should. But Leo’s background as a minister who has worked in many different parts of the world also deserves attention. In particular, I want to point to his training for the priesthood at Catholic Theological Union (CTU) in Chicago.
CTU is attached to no university, but it offers graduate degrees in theology and ministry. It was formed in 1968, after the Second Vatican Council, when men’s religious communities like Pope Leo’s Augustinians responded to the Council’s reforms by combining schools that trained men for the priesthood into CTU. Those schools wanted their candidates to be in a bustling city, near the University of Chicago, in conversation with people from other faiths, and attending classes with laypeople.
When Pope Leo attended CTU between 1978 and 1982, scholars on CTU’s faculty were leading the development of contextual theology. As Pope Francis described it in 2023, a contextual theology is one that begins from the lived experiences of people in many different places and cultures and searches for God within those experiences—where, indeed, God always can be found. In their important and defining 2004 book Constants in Context, Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder asserted what contextual theology asserts: the Gospel and Catholic faith are constant, but we discover those unchanging things in the different cultural contexts where people live.
The work that led to Constants in Context was underway long before 2004. Robert J. Schreiter, CPPS, wrote Constructing Local Theologies in 1985, in which he described how his new, contextual theological insights arose from his CTU classroom. Because CTU trains men from many religious communities, those communities send students from all around the globe—some sixty countries as of this writing. Once I taught a class of twenty-two students who, themselves, represented twelve nations. CTU is an unusual environment that way, and students often raise vital questions about theological constants: “What will this mean to the people in my home country?” “How can we help people understand this theology that was developed in the cultural environment of the West, in the Global North?” Those questions force professors to think in new ways about theology. Paying attention to constants in context for many decades now has been the result.
This is the CTU that Pope Leo would have known in the days when Schreiter was teaching. He would have heard those questions being asked, and he would have watched his professors working to answer them. Pope Leo met the global Church at CTU.
“Catholic” is a word that means “universal,” and so being global is a claim the Church has always made. But the Catholic Church really only began to recognize itself as a global Church in the twentieth century. The jet airplane made that possible in a way it had never been before. When 2,200 bishops from around the world gathered for Vatican II between 1962 and 1965, it changed the Church’s consciousness of itself forever. Slowly, that global reality has become more visible as the papacy has changed. Once, the pope never left the Vatican. Now, he boards airplanes to the farthest corners of the globe all the time. Francis advanced this development simply by being the first pope from the Global South. But Pope Leo is something else.
As is the case with so many CTU graduates, Pope Leo’s ministry took him far from home. He began his ministry in Peru, learning a new cultural context and finding God already at work there. He went on to be prior general, the global leader of his Augustinian community. The Augustinians minister in fifty nations of the world, and their members represent as many countries. The prior general’s job is to help those diverse cultural and historical experiences of Catholicism become one constant, global community. He returned later to Peru as a bishop, where he became a beloved spiritual leader. And from there to Rome—and the papacy.
At the heart of all Pope Leo’s journey is a theological vision rooted in contextuality. This is important. In recent decades, contextual theology has become a little controversial. The calls for doctrinal clarity coming from more traditional voices in the Church prefer to emphasize constancy—more of a one-size-fits-all theology than an accommodation for the diversity of human experience. This has been an important part of the academic debate within Catholicism. Does theology begin from the center or the margins? Pope Francis gave a definitive answer in 2023 when he said theology had reached a “turning point,” and he called for a “paradigm shift” to a contextual theology. Theology must begin from the lived experiences of people everywhere on the globe. The Church’s global reality is here to stay. Theology must meet that Church as it is, in all its wonderful and messy diversity, just as my colleagues and I meet it in our CTU classrooms.
Steven P. Millies is professor of public theology and director of The Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago.