ACI Prensa Staff, 26 May, 2025 / 7:40 pm (ACI Africa).
“Godfather, we love you! Long live the pope!” Mildred exclaimed as she shared her moving testimony about Father Robert Prevost, who was a young Augustinian priest in Chulucanas, Peru, when she was born and who today leads the Church as Pope Leo XIV.
Mildred, a 29-year-old Peruvian mother of two daughters and a devotee of St. John Paul II, is justifiably proud of her godfather: “I would love to tell him that I have admired him since I was little, that it’s not just a recent thing,” she said in an interview with EWTN Noticias, the Spanish-language broadcast edition of EWTN News.
The connection between the two began decades ago, when her father, Héctor Camacho, was a teenager serving as an altar boy at the cathedral in Chulucanas in the Piura district of the country. At that time, then-Father Prevost had just arrived in Peru as an Augustinian missionary, where he worked from 1985 to 1986.
“He always instilled in us the importance of believing in God, having faith, being respectful, polite, and trying to excel in life,” Camacho told EWTN News.
Some time later, Camacho moved to Trujillo to study, where he met Prevost again. The priest gave him spiritual guidance and encouraged him to do charitable work. When Prevost had to travel to the United States due to the death of his mother, Camacho asked his permission to name his daughter Mildred after her. Later, he also asked him to be her godfather.
