May 8 (UPI) — Reaction was swift, widespread and boisterous in Chicago on Thursday after the Vatican announced the election of the first-ever pope from the United States, a native of Chicago’s working-class South Side.
While there was some initial confusion over whether the new pontiff roots for Major League Baseball’s Cubs or their cross-town rival White Sox, it was clear that Robert Prevost, 69, who has taken the papal name Leo XIV, was a fan of Aurelios’ Chicago deep-dish pizza and remains fond of attending Mass at St. Mary’s Parish in Dolton, a section of Chicago where he grew up and attended seminary.
“I think this will do wonderful things for our local church,” Ryan Brady, pastor at St. Christina Church in Mount Greenwood, a Chicago neighborhood, said on WGN-TV. “I think people will become very excited. There will be some pride. Not only for our Catholic Church, but for our city.”
City streets were busy with activity as residents reacted with surprise. Prevost had been considered somewhat of a long shot to be named the next pontiff, and hometown pride mixed with spontaneous excitement, both among everyday residents and religious leaders, who pointed out that Prevost, of Peruvian descent, served as a missionary in Peru in his earlier years.
“He has a heart that immediately gravitates to the people who are the most overlooked, forgotten, the people who are the neediest,” Sister Barbara Reid, president of the Chicago Theological Union, said at a press conference broadcast on New York’s ABC TV affiliate.
Young people from local Catholic schools flooded Chicago streets with other excited city residents, crammed shoulder to shoulder — some draped in Peruvian flags and others waving American flags — jumping and waving their hands.
One resident repeated, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it,” according to the CBS News Chicago affiliate.
Dawn Ribnek, a lifelong Catholic born and raised in Chicago, said she traveled to Dolton when she learned that Prevost was the new pope because she wanted to visit the new pontiff’s childhood home.
“When I heard the news that our new pope Leo was elected and he was from Chicago, I was excited,” Ribnek told the Chicago Sun Times. But I also feel, as a Chicago-born and raised Catholic, that I have a real duty to pray for him, and I figured what better place to pray for the pope than his birthplace home.”
Prevost was elected by the conclave and assumed his new duties on Thursday.
