Pope Leo’s ‘greatest generation’ dad served on D-Day tank landing ship

U.S. Navy LSTs and other vessels unloading at low tide at Normandy, soon after the June 1944 invasion. USS LST-55 is in the center, behind the closest barrage balloon. USS LST-61 is at right. / Credit: Steck, U.S. Army Signal Corps, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 12, 2025 / 17:26 pm (CNA).

Louis Marius Prevost, the father of Pope Leo XIV, served on a D-Day landing ship during World War II and was a junior lieutenant in the United States Navy.

Since Pope Leo XIV became the new pontiff, the world has been eager to learn more about the first U.S.-born pope. The United States Department of Defense (DOD) released a statement about Pope Leo’s late father and his role in the revered “greatest generation” that won World War II.

Prevost was born on July 28, 1920, in Chicago. After he graduated from college, he joined the Navy in November 1943 when he was 23 years old. 

According to the Department of Defense, Prevost became the executive officer of a tank landing ship and “participated in the D-Day landings in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, as part of Operation Overlord.” He was in charge of a landing craft that “the Allies used to land infantry soldiers and Marines onto beaches during the war.”

On June 6, 1944, Prevost was involved in the Allied forces landing troops on Normandy beaches that “successfully executed the largest air, land, and sea invasion in history,” according to the DOD.

The Normandy coastline would soon run out of capacity for the amount of materials needed “to keep the Allied momentum going.” The U.S. Navy then sent Prevost and other landing ships to southern France on Aug. 15, 1944, to take part in Operation Dragoon, which “forced the Germans to defend a second front, diluting their effectiveness.”

“By the end of August,” the DOD said, “the Allies had captured the French ports of Marseille and Toulon, immediately using them to land supplies and equipment. In October 1944, more than a third of Allied cargo was shipped through those ports.”

Prevost was overseas on active duty for 15 months. He attained the rank of lieutenant junior grade prior to the war ending on May 8, 1945.

After the war, Prevost returned home and became the head of an elementary school district in Glenwood, Illinois. He later took a job as a principal at Mount Carmel Elementary School in Chicago and also did work teaching “the principles of the Christian religion” as a catechist.

In 1949 Prevost married Mildred Martinez, who was a librarian at the time. 

The couple had three sons: John Joseph Prevost; Louis Martin Prevost, also a U.S. Navy veteran; and Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV.

Prevost passed away in Chicago due to natural causes on Nov. 8, 1997.