The holiness of Father John McKniff inspired younger Augustinians like Father Prevost, who first came to Peru in 1985.
Robert Prevost’s nearly two decades of ministry in Peru were primarily shaped by the local Peruvian people to whom he ministered: parishioners he served, Augustinian seminarians he mentored, and priests and laypeople he led as a diocesan bishop.
But the future Pope was also impacted by the American missionaries with whom he worked in the South American country. Among them? A fellow Augustinian who is on the path to sainthood.
Known as the “Father of the Poor,” Servant of God Father John McKniff was a beloved figure during his ministry in northern Peru from 1972 to 1993. His holiness at the time was the stuff of legend, inspiring even younger Augustinians like Father Prevost, who first came to Peru in 1985.
“Father Prevost used to say that Father McKniff is a saint,” said Martin Feijo, who got to know the future Pope while serving as an altar boy in Chulucanas. “And look! Father McKniff is going to be a saint, just as Father Prevost predicted.”
Father of the Poor
Born in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1905, Father McKniff joined the Augustinians of the Province of St. Thomas of Villanova (eastern U.S.) in 1924. Ordained to the priesthood in 1930, he soon after devoted himself to missionary work.
After a three-year stint in the Philippines, Father McKniff served in Cuba for 29 years. When the Cuban government barred him from returning to Cuba, he responded to an invitation to head further south: to Peru.
Pope St. John XXIII entrusted the Midwest Province of Augustinians with pastoral care of the vast, rural prelature of Chulucanas, and the Eastern Province of Augustinians joined in by staffing the recently established parish of St. Joseph the Worker. Already fluent in Spanish and familiar with the Latin American context, Father McKniff petitioned to join. And in 1972, at the age of 67, he began his missionary service in Chulucanas.
Bishop Emeritus Daniel Turley, now 83, was a young Augustinian priest at the time, already serving in Chulucanas. And he remembers Father McKniff fondly.
“He was just a great Augustinian,” said Bishop Turley, who led the Diocese of Chulucanas from 2000 to 2020 and is now retired. “He was a man of prayer. He was just a very special person.”
Father McKniff promoted the Legion of Mary in Chulucanas, bringing together Marian devotions like the daily Rosary with acts of service like visiting the sick. He also helped promote the “New Image of the Parish” model that the Augustinians were trying to implement in Chulucanas, starting in 1977. The approach emphasized greater lay involvement in the Church’s mission and would make a formative impression on Father Prevost when he came to serve in the same parish in 1985.
But more than anything else, Father McKniff was renowned for his care and devotion to the poor and the suffering. Bishop Turley recalled that his fellow Augustinian would frequently visit the poor around town, asking the local prior for “a little bit of change” beforehand so that he could give alms to those in need. And Father McKniff was also remembered as always willing to go and see the sick and suffering when a priest was needed.
“He would say never say ‘No’ to go to someone who needed the sacraments of God,” said Bishop Turley. “Those are special moments in any family when one of your loved ones is dying. You don’t forget the people who came and were compassionate in helping you at those very delicate moments.”
Crossing Paths
When Father Prevost came to Chulucanas for a year in 1985, Father McKniff had already relocated to Trujillo, where he assisted at the local seminary. But Bishop Turley said that the paths of the future Servant of God and the future Pope crossed that year, given the interconnectedness of the American Augustinians in northern Peru at the time.
The two crossed paths again when Father Prevost returned to Peru in 1988, this time to lead a new Augustinian house of formation in Trujillo, which Father McKniff helped start.
“Father Prevost certainly knew him well,” Bishop Turley said of Father McKniff. “We all knew him well, and we all looked up to him very much.”
Servant of God
Father McKniff returned to the United States in 1993 due to health reasons but planned to return to Peru the following year. However, in February 1994, while traveling back to Peru, he stopped to visit the Augustinian community in Miami. He collapsed and was taken to the hospital, where he died on March 24, 1994, at age 88.
Following repeated requests by the Peruvian people, the diocesan process for Father McKniff’s canonization began in Chulucanas in 1999. Bishop Turley, who was then the coadjutor of the diocese, oversaw the process.
“I called in all these witnesses, and there was one after another,” he recalls. “All of them were saying that, yes, he was a man of God.”
The Vatican accepted the petition in 2000, formally giving Father McKniff “Servant of God” status. The diocesan phase concluded in 2002, and the materials supporting Father McKniff’s cause were sent to Rome.
Another significant milestone happened on July 8, 2025, when Father McKniff’s body was moved from Miami to Chulucanas, where it is now entombed beneath an altar in St. Joseph the Worker Parish. “People come every day,” said Bishop Turley. “They come and pray that, through the intercession of Servant of God John McKniff, there would be a miracle for their sick.”
A Future Saint?
For Father McKniff to be declared a “Venerable,” the next step in the canonization process, it would require the Vatican to make an official decree of heroic virtue.
But with a fellow Augustinian missionary now the Pope, is that more likely than not to happen?
“I’m sure Father Prevost, who’s now Pope Leo, did recognize his holiness and his goodness,” said Bishop Turley. But he added that the Pope has recently stressed that canonization processes must maintain high standards. As Leo said on Oct. 22, even “the treatment of ‘recent causes’ likewise cannot dispense with a serious and rigorous examination of all the material collected.”
But while Bishop Turley doesn’t expect Pope Leo XIV to play Augustinian favorites, he certainly thinks that progress in Servant of God John McKniff’s canonization process is possible during the current pontificate.
“If God wants it, it’ll happen,” said Bishop Turley.
“And hopefully Pope Leo will make it happen.”
