Fr. Antonio Iturbe, OSA: being Robert Prevost’s formator

The Spanish Augustinian Antonio Iturbe lived alongside the current Pope during his years at the College of Saint Monica. As formator of the Augustinian students who came to the Rome house from the different countries where the Order of Saint Augustine is present, he spent two academic years with a twenty-something Robert Prevost.

Today Fr. Antonio Iturbe, 89, lives in the Augustinian community of the Tomás Cámara Residence in Madrid, home to nine elderly Augustinians with specific medical needs. Together with some of his fellow religious, he recalls when he first met Pope Leo XIV.

He remembers that it was in the 1980s, when Robert Prevost was studying at the Angelicum, the Dominicans’ university in Rome, where he earned his doctorate in Canon Law.

From those two years living with a very young Robert Prevost, he remembers his kindness and how easy he was to live with. He highlights the courage of today’s Pope Leo XIV and his upright way of acting in situations that were not always easy, as he explains in the video.

In the following years their paths crossed on several occasions. Especially significant was their meeting in 2011 at the Monastery of El Escorial, where Fr. Antonio Iturbe was then prior.

In 2011, as prior of El Escorial, he welcomed Benedict XVI together with the then Prior General of the Order, Fr. Robert Prevost.

With only a few days to go before Pope Leo XIV arrives in Spain, Fr. Antonio Iturbe is living this moment with great emotion and getting ready to attend the Corpus Christi Mass on Sunday, June 7, in Madrid’s Plaza de Cibeles.