On an unseasonably chilly and windy Thursday afternoon in Chicago, a dozen or so folks stood exterior Wrigley Field, their telephones drawn to snap a image of the enduring marquee. It was celebrating the new pope—Robert Prevost, henceforth often called Leo XIV—who was (incorrectly, it seems) rumored to be a Cubs fan. One commercial after one other flashed throughout the display—for Home Run Inn pizza, for Jewel-Osco, for the Wendella Boat Tour—however nothing in regards to the Chicago-born pontiff.
“It feels like we’re waiting for the white smoke,” I mentioned to the man standing subsequent to me.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” he replied, as a frigid breeze blew throughout Clark Street. “I’d rather be in Rome.”
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Incidentally, I had only in the near past gotten again from Rome; my spouse and I occurred to be there when Pope Francis handed, the day after Easter. And after we went to the Vatican that night to pay our respects like the great—albeit lapsed—Catholics we’re, we discovered ourselves being interviewed by an Italian tv reporter. “Do you want the next pope to be an American?” she requested. An American pope, at this second in America? No, that’s alright, we mentioned.
A Chicago pope, although? Well, that’s a completely different story.
Leo—who holds twin United States and Peruvian citizenship—was born at Mercy Hospital on Chicago’s South Side, grew up within the far south suburb of Dolton, and studied on the Chicago Theological Union whereas instructing math and physics at St. Rita on the southwest aspect, the place it’s common to establish not by neighborhood however by parish. (My stepdad went to St. Rita. My spouse was a part of the primary class of ladies to graduate from its rival Marist. I went to public college within the suburbs and am nonetheless making an attempt to wrap my head round all these feuds.)
Those Chicago roots may give Prevost a “unique perspective,” mentioned James Robinson, dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School. “I think it’s really incredible that he comes from here,” Robinson instructed me. “Chicago people like to talk about this as the City of Broad Shoulders, the Windy City, but it is also, in my opinion, one of the most interesting religious cities in the country and the world.” Hyde Park—dwelling of University of Chicago, in addition to the CTU the place Prevost studied—is “the center for the mixing of [religious] traditions,” Robinson mentioned: That’s “something that’s needed, I think, more than anything in this increasingly divisive world.”
Michael Patrick Murphy, director of the Hank Center for Catholic Heritage and Senior Lecturer at Loyola University, had dinner with Prevost final summer season in west suburban Wheaton whereas they had been engaged on a venture collectively. “We had a great couple hours,” Murphy instructed me. “He was such a great guy.” They exchanged emails; Murphy nonetheless has Prevost’s cell quantity saved in his telephone. Now, the 69-year-old is the chief of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. “It’s mind-boggling,” Murphy mentioned. “Chicago’s gonna eat this up.”
Indeed, the brand new pope’s Chicago roots have already elicited waves of jokes—“No ketchup on the Eucharist!” one good friend texted in our group chat.
But Leo’s election will likely be about “more than the optics and spectacle” of getting a new pope, Murphy mentioned. This is one of the most Catholic cities within the nation, one the place you would possibly hear older Catholics converse reverently about when Pope John Paul II got here to city in 1979. Do Leo’s roots portend one other papal go to to Chicago? Perhaps.
