From The New York Times:
A man with a foot in two continents and multiple languages, Pope Leo XIV brings to bear a résumé that got him the job, full of deep religious education, frontline pastoral work, global order management and top Vatican governance experience. He also had a powerful booster in Pope Francis, who, at the end of his life, urgently pushed the American’s career forward.
He decided to invite Francis to celebrate a Mass with the Augustinian order, something popes did not usually do. “This pope is different,” Prevost told the Rev. Miguel Ángel Martín Juárez, the order’s secretary general in Rome at the time. When Francis accepted, “Bob nearly fell over,” said the Rev. Anthony Banks, another Augustinian.