My Kind of Pope

Obligatory Post By A Chicagoan on Our New Chicago Pope

Full disclosure: I’m mildly obsessed with Pope Leo XIV.

Thursday was a joyful day for Catholics around the world, but particularly for those of us in and around Chicago, as the newly announced Holy Father is a favored son of our hallowed city.

Since I work for a Catholic non-profit, conclave fever was already prevalent, even before we knew our local boy would make good. Honestly, I barely even knew there was a local boy to make good. From the conclave coverage I had seen, Cardinal Robert Prevost was a footnote in my memory, not a horse in the race.

I’ll never forget where I was when I heard the announcement, but I want to get it down for posterity anyway.

I was in my office on a work video call when someone in the meeting blurted out “White smoke!” and we all decided that was far more important than whatever we were meeting about. We hung up and I rushed to the office conference room to put on a livestream of the proceedings.

My colleagues joined me, and we switched between various live feeds from EWTN, Fox News, CNN, Relevant Radio, NBC, and others to try to find the best color commentary. While I distinctly remember watching live as Pope Francis appeared on the balcony in 2013, I don’t remember quite such a long wait before his announcement or the parade and fanfare that preceded it.

For example, I had no idea that there is a Vatican marching band! This begs so many questions. Where did they come from? What are they doing when there is no papal announcement to be made?¹ I couldn’t hear what song they were playing, but I assume it was this.

From the Vatican Choreography and Merriment Department

After channel surfing and watching closely for the movement of curtains on the papal balcony², the protodeacon—another thing I never heard about before this moment, but I assume it is a cardinal who is also a Transformer—finally made his appearance to “Habemus Papam” us into our new world order.

And what a new world order it is! The first American Pope is a Holy Father from the Windy City!

I know that I’m very, very biased, but there seems to be something supremely fitting about the first American Pope coming from the Second City. For all its flaws and the toll secularization has taken on the Catholic population here, this city still has Catholicism in its bones. It was a place where ethnic communities made great sacrifices to build beautiful churches and establish thriving parish communities that defined neighborhoods, families, and friend groups.

Chicago is a place rich in history, character, and delightful idiosyncrasies. We have Chicago-specific slang, cuisine, commercials, and life experiences.

Chicagoans are a self-loathing-but-prideful people. We can say bad things about our city, but you can’t. And when something like this happens to highlight our fair city, we are all united in our civic pride and our underdog status.³ Given the public reaction, everyone seems to be equally tickled by Pope Leo’s Chicago roots, and the city’s stock rose instantly with the announcement.

This is arguably the first conclave and papacy that has begun in the modern era of social media and instantaneous (mis)information powered by an army of tweets, memes, newsletters, podcasts, and anyone else who wants to put their content into the ether.

This led to the immediate mobilization of the simultaneously best and worst things about the Internet:

1. Every scrap of info on Robert Prevost’s pre-papal life and any person who ever remembers coming into contact with him were thrust into the limelight within hours. Are you a Subway Sandwich Artist who once served him a #5? Here’s a microphone. Tell us your story. Did he get olives?

2. Internet humor. The memes. Oh, the memes!

This isn’t even scratching the surface. I have had an unpaid, part-time job finding, receiving⁴, and reposting memes, jokes, interviews, quotes, and information about the new pope, and I am loving it.

But there was one part I didn’t love.

Within seemingly a half hour of the announcement, CBS News posted that the biggest miracle of the new papacy is that this South Sider is actually a Chicago Cubs fan! They say my heart grew three sizes when I heard that news.

But this was not the case.

Hours later, several Chicago area news outlets had tracked down the Pope’s older brother—more on the papal brothers later. He stated in heated terms that only an ornery Sox fan could muster that this case of mistaken fan-dentity was preposterous. While the Pope’s mom came from a Cub fan lineage, the Vicar of Peter is himself a deeply devoted White Sox fan.

Within a day, a photo (and video footage!) of the Pope at a 2005 White Sox World Series game had surfaced. What?! How did they find that?!

Here’s how:

chicagosuntimes

A post shared by @chicagosuntimes

Baseball allegiances aside, there has also been much investigative work done to determine where the new pope stands. You know what I mean. Is he with us or is he against us? And by “us,” I mean whichever orthodox or liberal end of the Church spectrum you inevitably fall on.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that the most people can dig up—and the way he has represented himself so far—is that the Pope is Catholic. He believes in Jesus Christ. He believes in evangelization. He trusts the Holy Spirit. He is steeped in Church history and tradition. He understands the influence and nobility of his position.

At this point, that’s good enough for me, and I’m excited to see where this goes.

My bigger takeaway from this huge development—and the Chicago-centric circus surrounding it—is that for the first time in my understanding, the Pope is kind of a regular guy.

He goes to White Sox playoff games. He plays Wordle every morning with his brother. He snaps at his older brother about not answering his phone in the most relatable, endearing way possible.

All these memes are driving at the fact that this Pope has eaten more hot dogs than any other Pope because he has had a host of worldly, American experiences given his age and the geography of his upbringing. We can all relate. We can all assume he likes Lou Malnati’s and Portillo’s.

We’ve had a lot of legendary popes in my lifetime, but “relatable” is not something I ever would have thought about any of them. When I was growing up, Pope John Paul II was a holy, wonderful, and distant answer to religion class questions about “who is a good example of faith.” He wasn’t a guy with older brothers with Chicago accents playing word games on his smart phone.⁵

My kids know that the new Pope came from Chicago. They know lots of people from Chicago. They know White Sox fans. They watch me play Wordle. The papacy is suddenly more real, local, and dare I say, attainable somehow. I wish I had better words to describe what I mean, but I’m still processing the idea myself.

There’s a cool photo making the rounds of Pope Leo and the aforementioned brothers with their mom standing on the steps of Holy Name Cathedral.

He’s literally just a kid from Chicago who followed his vocation and the Holy Spirit led him all the way to the papacy. That is just so cool.

Pope Leo XIV seems to be a very holy, thoughtful man, and I’m hopeful he is going to be a heckuva good pope at a time when the Church and the world desperately need a heckuva good leader.⁶

I am praying for him, especially for the moment when this public euphoria (that has been largely positive) glows away or he makes a statement upholding tough Church teachings and the secular world remembers that this Italian beef-loving pontiff is also, you know, Catholic, and that’s hard.

I’m praying for his family. It can’t be easy to find out that your brother/uncle/friend is the new pope at the same moment that everyone else does and watch your private life turn into a public zoo.

I’m praying for all the people who have been intrigued by the conclave and the selection of the new pope. I pray that their interest in this ancient and holy tradition might spark a greater curiosity about the Catholic faith itself and the truth of our faith can be revealed to them.

I’m excited to continue watching Pope Leo’s early moves and remarks, and I’m psyched to think about his inevitable return to Sweet Home Chicago. I always thought the Bulls dynasty or the Cubs winning the World Series would be the single greatest Chicago event to happen in my lifetime, but that was before we got Da Pope.

God bless you, Pope Leo XIV!

1. For a second I thought maybe they would spell out the new pontiff’s name in formation, but no such luck.

2. We moved on from watching a chimney to watching curtains. It’s been quite a week.

3. Take that, NYC! Where’s your Pope, Boston?

4. My gratitude to everyone who continues to share this comedy gold with me!

5. As I’ve gotten older and seen photos of him camping with his young adult groups and such, he has obviously gotten more relatable, but the point stands.

6. Based on his early remarks about choosing the name Leo because we are experiencing another Industrial Revolution with AI and technology about which the Church has a lot to offer, we have someone who is clued into the issues of the day. Good stuff!