Preservationists seek landmark designation for Pope Leo XIV's boyhood church on Far South Side

How a working-class Chicago suburb and a tight-knit Catholic parish shaped Pope Leo XIV

In one of Chicago’s south suburbs, while other boys were playing cops and robbers, the future Pope Leo XIV would pretend to hold Mass in the basement of his family’s small brick home, reading from scripture and distributing disk-shaped candy wafers to his two older brothers.

Preservationists seek landmark designation for Pope Leo XIV's boyhood church on Far South Side

Preservation Chicago will go before a Commission on Chicago Landmarks committee to recommend a landmark district for sites linked to Pope Leo XIV.

Chicago-style hotdogs, pizza, the White Sox just a few of new pope's Windy City faves

As details of Pope Leo XIV's past life come to light many are struck by his Chicago roots and his Chicago-ness.

Dolton, the Chicago suburb that gave us a pope

When a young Robert Francis Prevost set off in the early 1980s for Rome to take his vows as a priest, his hometown of Dolton was on the precipice of fundamental changes. As the future Pope Leo XIV was being ordained and earning a doctorate in church law, the steel mills in Chicago were closing, instigating the decline of Dolton and its neighbors. Good-paying jobs disappeared. Household income fell. Waves of white families left, and Black familie…

Chicago-style hotdogs, pizza, the White Sox just a few of new pope's Windy City favorites

CHICAGO (OSV News) — “In honor of Pope Leo XIV, I’m going to have a thin crust pizza,” said Augustinian seminarian Brother Nathan Fernandes, a former chef at a fine dining Italian restaurant, in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Chicago-born pope’s now permanent home in Rome. Best known to this year’s set of seminarians from the Augustinian Midwest Province as Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, the native Chicagoan had just been elected pope the day before,…

A few of Pope Leo XIV's Windy City favorites include Chicago-style hot dogs, pizza and the White Sox - The Dialog

CHICAGO — “In honor of Pope Leo XIV, I’m going to have a thin crust pizza,” said Augustinian seminarian Brother Nathan Fernandes, a former chef at a fine dining Italian restaurant, in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Chicago-born pope’s now permanent home in Rome. Best known to this year’s set of seminarians from the Augustinian Midwest Province as Cardinal Robert F. Prevost, the native Chicagoan had just been elected pope the day before, on May 8, …