As a seminarian in 1980, Pope Leo XIV lived at least three months in Minneapolis and developed a friendship with a Lutheran classmate and his wife that lasts to this day.
“I emailed Pope Leo — or Bob, as I called him — about a week before they went into the Sistine Chapel,” said the Rev. John Snider, 70, of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in West St. Paul.
“Dear Bob,” the reverend’s April 27 email read. “Polly and I send our love and prayers for you in these momentous days. As I near retirement — three weeks — you are taking on such intense responsibility. God is with you, John Snider.”
Then-Cardinal Robert Prevost responded April 30, before entering the chapel May 7 as a voting member of a papal conclave that ended the next day with his own election as the first American pope.
“Hello, John and Polly,” then-Cardinal Prevost’s reply read. “Many thanks for your message. Everything’s in God’s hands. Thanks for your friendship through the years. Best wishes, Bob.”
“It’s wild. It’s just wild,” Rev. Snider said May 14, adding that he heard reports of white smoke billowing from the Sistine Chapel — indicating the election of a pope — as he entered a Menards home improvement store May 8. “I went out of Menards and turned the radio on to reports of ‘Robert Prevost.’ I said, ‘Wow!’”
Rev. Snider met seminarian Prevost, a native of Chicago who joined the Order of St. Augustine and now is Pope Leo XIV, when they were in a three-month summer class with three other students and a supervisor at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. They trained to minister as chaplains and met in a group to discuss successes and challenges. Rev. Snider was 24 at the time and the future pope was 23.
The two became friends, along with Rev. Snider’s wife, Polly. They went to movies together, had dinner and enjoyed other outings. The future pope lived in a small apartment on the hospital campus, one likely for nurses, students and others connected to the complex, the reverend said.
“He was one of the best listeners (Polly) said she ever encountered,” Rev. Snider said. “Just absolutely present. Everybody counted.”
Prevost also took the initiative to insist that if they were to be friends, it would take a commitment, Rev. Snider said. “That’s kind of what our summer became. He brought that Augustinian sense of community,” which helped the Sniders — who had been married three years at that time — set priorities of their own, the reverend said.
“He was grounded. He was mature,” Rev. Snider said. “He knew how to move among people, to say his piece, to be aware of others. If you know how to love, you’ve come a long way. And I think Bob knew how to love; that has not changed.”
Traveling to Toledo, Ohio, for an internship shortly after the class ended, Rev. Snider and his wife stopped to visit Prevost in the Augustinian house in Hyde Park, Illinois. Another visit happened one winter, when the future pope spent a weekend with Rev. Snider’s parents, brother and sister in Elkhart, Indiana. “He went snowmobiling with my brother, Mark,” Rev. Snider said.
In 2010, Rev. Snider and his wife visited then-Father Prevost in Rome.
Now, Rev. Snider will retire after Lutheran services May 18, the same day a Mass will inaugurate Pope Leo XIV’s papacy in Rome.
“It’s amazing to see a friend go do what he’s doing,” Rev. Snider said, reflecting on the dramatic changes that are required for his friend to move from Chicago to being a missionary in Peru, to leading the international Augustinians, to working in the Vatican, to leading 1.4 billion Catholics around the globe.
“Somebody said that’s why a name change, from Simon to Peter, from Bob to Leo,” Rev. Snider said. “Bob Prevost is gone. There’s a whole new thing going on.”
