Michigan Catholics took pride Thursday not only in experiencing the election of the first U.S.-born pope, but in Pope Leo XIV’s ties to west Michigan, where he attended a minor seminary for high school.

The cardinals elected to the papacy Cardinal Robert Prevost, a 69-year-old missionary who was born in Chicago, spent time in the Holland area in his teens as a seminarian, spent his career ministering in Peru and took over the Vatican’s powerful office of bishops. Detroit Archbishop Edward Weisenburger noted at a Thursday press conference in Detroit that Prevost had Midwest roots, having studied at the now-defunct St. Augustine High School, a minor seminary, and then the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where he earned a master’s in divinity degree.

“That gives him a tie to us,” Weisenberger said at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Detroit. “There’s a certain amount of pride Americans can take in this.”

Prevost attended an Augustinian minor seminary in Allegan County, which now falls, geographically, inside the Diocese of Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo Bishop Edward Lohse said.

The diocese became aware of Prevost’s past history there after Prevost shared it with Lohse at a conference shortly after Lohse was installed as bishop in 2023. Prior to Thursday’s election, Prevost led the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops and was involved in the week-long conference Lohse attended, the Kalamazoo bishop said.

“When I first introduced myself to him, I said, ‘I am Bishop Lohse from Kalamazoo,’” Lohse said. “His immediate response was, ‘Oh, I know Kalamazoo. I was in the high school there when the diocese was established.’”

The minor seminary, St. Augustine Seminary High School in Laketown Township, no longer exists. Lohse said he believed the property was sold to the state, and much of it was later torn down. The high school likely fell within the Diocese of Grand Rapids while Prevost attended his early high school years, Lohse said, and in the Diocese of Kalamazoo as Prevost finished high school. The Diocese of Kalamazoo was established in 1971.

Augustinians from Chicago have helped at parishes in the diocese for decades, up until about five years ago, Lohse said. Prevost was one of those who would help out at parishes in his early years of priesthood. In fact, Lohse recalled, a parishioner at St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Niles, who remembered Prevost as a priest at the parish, asked Lohse if he’d met Prevost while at his conference in 2023.

“There are people there who still have a very warm regard for him when he used to be the priest who showed up for Sunday mass,” Lohse said. “Not only do we know him now as our pope, but he also knows us because he was a priest here in western Michigan.”

Lohse’s own interactions with Prevost during that week-long conference left an impression.

“Every time I spoke with him, I came away from the conversations thinking this is a genuinely good man,” Lohse said.

“I think that my impressions from that week were not just me,” he added. “I think the cardinals were perceiving the same thing based on how quickly he was elected.”

Prevost’s stay at high school

The original St. Augustine Seminary, located in Laketown Township at the edge of Saugatuck Dunes State Park, was a minor seminary for high school students who had expressed an interest in the priesthood. The location is now known as the Dorr Felt Estate and is used as a museum and event venue. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

On Thursday, white wedding tents were set up outside the 25-room mansion and the nearby carriage house, and decorative outdoor lights were strung outside. A young couple got engaged on the lawn even as Kelsey Blair set up for a separate wedding inside the mansion and fielded several calls as news broke of the estate’s now-famous former seminarian.

Prevost, based on the timing of his high school career in the early 1970s, likely stayed in the original mansion, which housed teachers and priests, and attended classes in the carriage house, which functioned as the school, said Blair, who is operations manager for the Dorr Felt Estate.

But the school was later transitioned to a new, larger building in a nearby field, likely around the time Prevost was attending. That building was purchased by the state in 1977, used for a time as the Saugatuck Dunes Correctional Facility and then pulled down, Blair said. The mansion was used during that time as a Michigan State Police post.

The Felt Estate was sold by the state in 1995 for $1 to Laketown Township. It is now managed by a nonprofit, Friends of the Felt Estate.

Blair, a Catholic, said Thursday’s papal election was “awesome” on a personal and professional level.

“I’m a historian, so I’ve always loved this place,” Blair said. “But now we’re actually more important to more people.”

Detroit leaders weigh in

Weisenburger said he never expected to ever see an American pope during his lifetime.

“For a long time, the concern was geopolitics, that certain countries, nations would fear that the United States has sort of taken over the papacy or the Catholic church,” the Detroit archbishop said. “However, when you look at our new pope, Leo XIV, you get the very clear impression that this is a man of an incredible variety of talents and gifts and blessings.”

Weisenburger said it was “profound” that the new pontiff did not speak in English during his first speech as pope, but instead in Italian, Latin and Spanish.

“I think he’s revealing from the beginning that he really is a universal pastor,” the Detroit archbishop said.

Monsignor G. Michael Bugarin, the pastor of St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in St. Clair Shores, echoed the archbishop’s assessment, saying Pope Leo XIV has “got a lot of gifts to bring to the church.”

“As I always say, the Lord gives us the shepherds that we need at these particular moments in history,” he added.

Bugarin noted that Prevost was ordained into the Augustinians, which is a religious order. The order is based on the teaching of Jesus Christ and Aurelius Augustine, the bishop of Hippo from 354-430, and promotes the spirit of community as lived by the first Christian communities.

“He’s just a very humble man, and he’s a shepherd who looks after — as Pope Francis was looking after — the poor and the needy and those on the periphery,” Bugarin said after watching the pope’s speech that was given from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Fr. Thomas McClain, the superior of the Detroit Jesuit Community, said he is hopeful based on Leo’s brief public remarks so far that “he’ll follow in the direction that Pope Francis had set out,” referring to the late pope’s message that the Catholic Church is open to all.

“A variety of conversations and perspectives help us to move forward,” McClain said.

The faithful embrace pope

Stephanie Garsteck-Polak, a Catholic who lives in Clinton Township, said she’s “so glad to have an American in there.”

From her understanding of other popes named Leo, the name represents “a lot of social justice,” she said.

“I think he’s going to be all about inclusion,” Garsteck-Polak said, “and he’ll be really for the poor.”

She added that Prevost has a college degree in mathematics — from Villanova University in Philadelphia in 1977 — so “hopefully he’ll keep the finances good.”

Colleen Maciejewski, the assistant principal at St. Anne Catholic Grade School in Warren, called the election of an American pope “very exciting.”

“I didn’t think ever in my lifetime I would see an American pope, so that was exciting,” Maciejewski said. “He was not one that I really had thought was in the top running.”

She said the name that Prevost chose, Leo XIV, might be an indicator of “what he wants to do in his papacy.”

“And that would be as a bridge,” she said. “Leo the XIII was really known for the Catholic social teachings.”

Pope Leo XIII, who was head of the Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903, laid the foundation for modern Catholic social thought, most famously with his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed workers’ rights and capitalism at the dawn of the industrial age, according to the Associated Press. He criticized both laissez-faire capitalism and state-centric socialism, giving shape to a distinctly Catholic vein of economic teaching.

Maciejewski said the church bells rang at St. Anne when white smoke emerged from the Sistine Chapel and when Leo XIV appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. The bells were ringing when the elementary students were at recess, so they knew that the new pope had been named, she said.

The school held a “mock conclave” on Monday, Maciejewski said, with the students researching the cardinals whom they thought might be the contenders for the papacy.

“We locked the middle school in a room, and they had their own little conclave, and it was great,” said Maciejewski, who lives in St. Clair Shores. “It’s just so exciting to be part of history.”

The election of Prevost as pope is “a dream come true for American Catholics,” said Walter Glinka, a parishioner in Detroit’s St. Francis D’Assisi Church.

“It makes the state of Michigan very, very proud to have pontifical roots,” he added.

Glinka echoed the belief that Leo will be a pope who welcomes everyone into the church, including marginalized people, and carry on Francis’ legacy as a peacemaker.

“In order for Roman Catholicism to work,” he said, “you have to do it for all.”

Prevost overcame the resistance to name a U.S. pope because “he is extremely well-educated but grew up in a very urban city, Chicago, full of immigrants,” said Silvia Pedraza, a professor of sociology and American culture at the University of Michigan.

“Also, he is American but spent years working in Peru,” she added in a statement. “That is, he is a candidate from the First World but with a lot of knowledge about the Third World.”

The election of a U.S. pope is likely to mean more papal visits to the United States, Pedraza said, and perhaps a trip to one of the most renowned cathedrals of America’s pastime: “I would enjoy seeing him at a Cubs game in Chicago, if it were possible.”

But Prevost’s brother John told NBC Chicago on Thursday that the pope is a Chicago White Sox fan.

Staff Writer Julia Cardi contributed to this report