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Hours after cardinals voted to name the first-ever American to head the Catholic Church, Leo XIV’s hometown of Chicago was consumed by an existential question: which baseball team did the pope root for?
Chicago is a Catholic city, with a third of the metro area’s population identifying as such. It’s also a sports town, with fierce loyalties to the city’s two baseball teams dividing the north and south sides. Early reports claimed that Cardinal Robert Prevost, now pope, was a fan of the North Side’s Cubs, before an interview with the pontiff’s brother corrected the record. The new leader of the world’s 1.4bn Catholics has, in fact, long cheered for the South Side’s White Sox.
Lest the team be accused of bearing false witness, the exuberant message “Hey, Chicago, he’s a Cubs fan!” lighting up the storied marquee at Wrigley Field quickly disappeared. Across town, at the White Sox’s stadium, fans were spotted at games in full papal regalia.
Last week when Catholics across the world heard the traditional declaration “Habemus papam” (We have a pope), Chicagoans very much heard “we have a pope”. How could we not? Prevost was born at a hospital within city limits, grew up in the south suburbs, studied at Hyde Park’s Catholic Theological Union and taught maths and physics as a substitute teacher at the Augustinian St Rita of Cascia High School. “Father Bob” even visited local chain Aurelio’s for pizza when he was in town last year.
The announcement shocked the city as much as the world. Adrienne Alexander, a board member for the Catholic Labor Network, told her brother “no way” when he suggested the next pope might be American, only to receive his “lol” text when the news broke. “My little brother was right to consider . . . that the Holy Spirit might laugh at us,” she said.
When Prevost appeared on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, Chicago — and I say this with love — collectively lost its mind. God is going to need to forgive us for the memes and the merch.
A post on X depicted a Eucharistic wafer and chalice refashioned as square-cut pizza (a style many here prefer to deep dish) and a bottle of the disgusting local liqueur Malort. The famed Wieners Circle hot dog stand posted “Canes nostros ipse comedit” on its outdoor marquee sign: “He has eaten our dogs”.
The Chicago Sun-Times evoked the nickname of the city’s football team, “Da Bears”, to write a headline for the ages introducing, “Da pope!” Obvious Shirts unveiled a pontiff collection in the colours of three of the city’s sports teams, including one in Cubbie blue reading, “The pope being a Sox fan is still better than being a Cardinal” — a jab at the Cubs’ hated redbird rivals from St Louis.
Customers at Aurelio’s can now order the “Poperoni” pizza, and last week the popular local chain Portillo’s debuted “The Leo”, describing it as “divinely seasoned Italian Beef, baptized in gravy”.
About 150 congregants showed up for the 8am Mass at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral the day after Prevost’s selection, a packed house for a weekday service. “There is a natural inclination . . . for us to be grateful that a fellow Chicagoan was elected the Supreme Pontiff,” said Bishop Larry Sullivan during his homily. “I understand how important that is to be able to celebrate that, to have that hometown pride.”
Chicago, after all, is a place where people tattoo themselves with the city flag. The third largest city in the US, Chicago always has been a bit chippy over the coastal dismissiveness of those in New York and Los Angeles who routinely ignore 2.7mn people. So to be thrust into the centre of a global news story has been fun. The inside jokes over baseball allegiance are a way of saying “he’s ours”.
But of course, Leo XIV is not just ours, and not only because he spent more than two decades as a missionary and later a bishop in Peru, where he is a naturalised citizen. Elizabeth Glennon, who attended Friday’s Mass at the cathedral, noted that “everyone’s trying to claim him, but he’s pope for everyone”.
Very true. But I’ll bet the Sox, who last year logged one of the worst seasons in baseball history with 41 wins and 121 losses, are still glad the pope is on their side.
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