Pope Leo’s Childhood Friend Reveals the Fitting Name Everybody at School Used to Call Him (Exclusive)

Pope Leo XIV has had a pristine popularity since he was once only a boy, such a lot in order that his grade-school buddies had a synonymous nickname for the brand new pope, who was once born Robert Provost in Chicago, a long time in the past.

In an interview with PEOPLE, John Doughney of Grapevine, Texas, recalled his early days with Pope Leo once they had been simply youngsters at St. Mary of the Assumption School.

“When you think about a 13-year-old boy on the South Side of Chicago … typically people would not immediately say, ‘oh, kind, compassionate, humble.’ But those are words that you would use,” the retired trainer, 69, tells PEOPLE.

“Even as a 13-year-old, he was unique and the rest of us could see that.”

Doughney and Pope Leo had been in the similar grade for 8 years they attended St. Mary’s.

“It’s been quite a long time since I last saw Robert or spoke to him. But when I saw his name as a potential Pope candidate, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness. I went to school with him.’ And the memories of just how he was, they just came flooding back,” Doughney tells PEOPLE.

“There was once a mix of wonder and pleasure,” after he discovered, he says.

“The surprise comes, not that he would’ve been chosen Pope, because he, to me, is the perfect choice for Pope. But the fact that there had never been an American pope,” Doughney provides.

The 267th pope is the primary ever to be born within the U.S.

Doughney tells PEOPLE there isn’t a “specific incident” he can recall about Pope Leo, who was once selected within the Cardinal conclave on May 8.

“There are a large number of singular incidents that I will be able to level to about folks, and normally the ones don’t seem to be very certain,” Doughney says. “We generally tend to bear in mind the dangerous issues that children do. And for Robert, there was once a fidelity of the way he was once and the way he held himself at the same time as a 13-year-old, which is, I imply, that is the distinctive a part of it’s 13-year-olds are creating and their hormones are raging and they are defiant and they are moody and they are pushing limits. And he was once virtually just like the calm within the adolescent typhoon.”

“He was always kind. Never had saw him have any kind of words with anybody else. And certainly no kind of physical altercations, which was a common occurrence in the south side of Chicago,” he says simply earlier than revealing what everybody known as Pope Leo.

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“We even called him Holy. His brothers even referred to him as Holy, and he really was. I do believe that he knew what his path was going to be,” Doughney tells PEOPLE. “I don’t know that he knew his path would take him to the papacy, but he knew his path was into the Catholic church as a priest and then as a missionary. And very few 13-year-olds are that steadfast in knowing this is the path I’m taking and this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.”

Doughney says whilst many of the boys at St. Mary’s would behave at mass as a result of the nuns, “Robert was good at it simply because I think it was something very natural for him.” 

“Some of us did it because we were being compliant. He did it because it was part of him,” he tells PEOPLE.