A unanimous distinction days before the trip
The University of Buenos Aires decided to confer its highest honorary title, Doctor Honoris Causa, on Pope Leo XIV, whose secular name is Robert Francis Prevost. The Superior Council, the institution's top governing body, backed the measure unanimously at its session on October 28, 2026. The announcement came shortly before the pontiff's first visit to Argentina, scheduled for November 8 to 11.[S1][S2][S3]
The trip was confirmed after the pope underwent treatment for a complex health problem. According to the reporting, he described his recovery as optimal and kept his commitment to travel to the country. His agenda includes pastoral and institutional activities during the four-day stay.[S1][S2]
The Superior Council brings together the rector, the deans of the university's 13 faculties and five representatives from each of the professors, graduates and students. The resolution was made public before the pope set foot in Buenos Aires, placing him among the figures honored by Argentina's largest public university.[S1][S2][S3]
Why the university chose the pontiff
The resolution states that Leo XIV, elected on May 8, 2025, became the 267th successor of Saint Peter. The university argued that his thinking reaches beyond the religious sphere and bears on social, political, cultural and academic debates of international scope. It also noted that, as head of state of Vatican City and the Catholic Church's highest authority, he has spoken since the start of his pontificate about inequality, poverty, migration, the environmental crisis, armed conflicts and peacebuilding.[S1][S2][S3]
The document adds technological change and the effect of artificial intelligence on work to the list of his concerns. The university also highlighted his positions on democratic coexistence and on strengthening exchanges between cultures and religions. It grounded the recognition especially in his view of dialogue as a means of building consensus and acknowledging the dignity of those who hold different ideas, beliefs or ways of life.[S1][S2][S3]
For the university, the honor is not confined to the pope as an individual. It also expresses the value the institution places on academic, cultural and interreligious dialogue in the face of current challenges. The resolution lists his commitment to international peace, his contributions to understanding among religious and cultural traditions and his work for more inclusive societies as exceptional merits.[S1][S2][S3]
From Chicago to Peru, and an encyclical on technology
Leo XIV was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 14, 1955, and belongs to the Order of Saint Augustine. His academic training combined mathematics, philosophy, theology and canon law. He earned a degree in mathematics at Villanova University, a degree in theology at the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago, and licentiate and doctoral degrees in canon law at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Italy.[S1][S2]
His missionary work began in 1985 in Chulucanas, Peru, where he served as parish vicar and chancellor of the territorial prelature. From 1988 he carried out pastoral and formative duties in Trujillo, where he was community prior, judicial vicar and parish priest. In that city he also served as director of studies and interim rector of the San Carlos and San Marcelo Major Seminary, teaching canon law, moral theology and patrology.[S1][S2]
He also acted as director of formation and master of professed members of the Order of Saint Augustine, with responsibilities for the academic, spiritual and pastoral preparation of new generations of religious. Before the UBA distinction, he had already received honorary doctorates from Villanova University, in humanistic sciences, and from the Catholic University Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo in Peru.[S1][S2]
His first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, holds a central place in the resolution's reasoning. The document addresses the protection of the person and human dignity amid the advance of artificial intelligence from the standpoint of the Church's social doctrine. It examines the ethical, social and educational consequences of technological change, with attention to the link between innovation, the common good and human dignity, and it calls for equitable access to education and to the benefits of scientific and technological progress.[S1][S2]
