It was just very simple and sweet, the celebration of Pope Leo XIV held at White Sox stadium in Chicago last Saturday afternoon. It was one of the most straightforwardly nice Catholic moments I have ever witnessed. Basically: “We’re from Chicago, the pope is from Chicago, this is awesome. Let’s hang out where he watched baseball.”
It was not a Catholic event created to rally the lost youth or explain the mystical qualities of the Eucharist or validate anyone’s sexual preferences or defend religious freedom or rein in A.I. or plead for justice for the wretched of the earth. It was held to celebrate that this guy, who is doing that thing, is from this place, and how great is that? And, given another momentous event happening in Chicago that day, it underscored something particular about our church worth celebrating as well.
The Chicago archdiocese estimated that up to 30,000 people attended the event, “Chicago Celebrates Pope Leo XIV,” which took place in 75-degree weather under a soft blue sky at the ballpark (known as Rate Field) on the South Side of Chicago. The pope being a White Sox fan, you wonder if they could have held the event anywhere else.
In an address to the audience before the Mass began, Brooks Boyer, a White Sox senior vice president, pointed out that Robert Prevost was spotted on national TV 20 years ago, sitting in section 140, row 19, seat 2 during the 2005 World Series. “Think about that,” Boyer said, “a man who is now leading over a billion people in faith was sitting shoulder to shoulder with fans through some of the great moments in White Sox history.” (At times I think the event was 40 percent a celebration that Chicago’s Robert Prevost is pope and 60 percent a celebration that Pope Prevost is a White Sox fan. Which, don’t get me wrong, is a perfectly legitimate ratio to have.)
Unsurprisingly, many people who came to the event wore White Sox paraphernalia, T-shirts that said “Southsider,” uniforms retrofitted to refer to Pope Leo. Elderly couples, parents with kids in strollers, young couples, intergenerational groups: mother, daughter and granddaughter. The mood was happy and chill and smiling and fun.
The event included both the Peruvian and American national anthems, an ecumenical message from Bishop Simon Gordon, senior pastor of Triedstone Church of Chicago and the president of the Council of Religious leaders of Metropolitan Chicago, and hymns by a superb boys choir from, no kidding, Leo High School, an all-boys Catholic school in the city. It was emceed by Chuck Swirsky, the radio announcer for the Bulls and a lector at Chicago’s Holy Name Cathedral. The kids from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy, whose mock papal conclave went viral on social media, were there in full cardinal regalia. An actual cardinal, Blase J. Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, celebrated Mass.
To my thinking, the whole affair at the stadium was a collective gape of the American jaw that we are still experiencing since the white smoke stole focus from the seagulls on the roof of the Sistine Chapel: Wait, what? The pope is from the United States?
For probably all the Chicagoans present, it was as if Marty McFly’s iconic line—“You made a time machine...out of a Delorean?”—had been rendered into the more numinous, joyful question, “You made a pope…out of a South Sider?”
(Dolton, where the pope is from, is technically just outside the city border and not in the city’s vaunted, “tough” South Side. But if a Reddit thread is any barometer, a string of 80-plus posts on the touchy topic of “who can legitimately claim Chicago as their home” was nearly unanimous in declaring Robert Prevost an authentic Chicagoan. The pope’s true hometown was also affirmed on the back of a woman’s T-shirt I saw at the event. It read: ”Popes from Chicago: 1. Popes from Green Bay: 0.”)
The collective sense of awe that the pope is an American from Chicago was encapsulated in a solo piano effort by Augustinian brother David Marshall. A pre-recorded video of Brother Marshall performing the song was played on a large screen in the outfield. Called “One of Us,” and sung in a blend of Latin, Spanish and English, the song had the feel of a reflective Broadway tune outlining the hero’s backstory. It was also, I think, the most heartbreakingly sweet moment of the event. Brother Marshall sang:
Growing up near South Side Chicago,
People had a feeling, but did they know
That this little boy would be the pope.
Entered formation as an Augustinian friar
a restless heart burning with desire,
a steadfast friend and liked driving cars…
Called into the Vatican Dicastery
Where he dealt with problems and bureaucracy
but he never loses sight
of who he is really…
Darelyn Chambers from the South Loop, standing in the concourse rocking her 3-month-old, told me, “It’s neat to see a Chicago representative on a global scale.” When asked what she wants from him, she said, “Just to pray for peace in Chicago and all major cities.”
Jake Berent of Garfield Ridge said he was pleased to hear the pope chose the name of the “labor pope,” Leo XIII. “The name of Leo says something about standing up for labor and human dignity, in all work.” Berent, who, it so happens, works for the Chicago Federation of Labor, said, “The working class is at a juncture, a lot of balance of power has tilted to [the wealthy], and he is conscious of that.”
Zsa Juby of Orland Park, who is of an age where her parents are long since deceased, explained what it meant to her when she heard the news that the pope was from Chicago. “It’s unbelievable,” she said. “We felt connected. I can’t describe it. It’s wonderful. It’s like you get your dad back.”
•••
I had traveled to Chicago that weekend from New York to attend Jesuit priestly ordinations. Seven men were ordained on Saturday morning at St. Rita’s Church on Chicago’s North Side. As the ordinations were wrapping up around noon, the “No Kings” protests downtown were getting underway. Thousands of people gathered in Chicago and around the country to protest the deportation of migrants, the imposition of tariffs, cuts to U.S.A.I.D., possible future cuts to Medicaid and other social programs. As a whole, they rallied against what they saw as President Donald J. Trump’s existential threat to democracy. As the protests wound down later in the afternoon, the papal celebration and Mass on the South Side began.
All of which made me wonder: Does one impact the other? Did these somewhat ephemeral things like the anointing and the vesting and the reading of the Scripture and the laying on of hands and the lifting of the host—did it flare out somehow from the North Side and the South Side into downtown? Did the energy and light of the Eucharist, of the Leo students singing “We are Marching,” of people celebrating new priests and a new pope, radiate out in some mystical way to the “No Kings” rally, helping in some way defend immigrants and anti-poverty programs and democracy?
While the papal celebration was not intended as a vehicle for defending the poor of the earth, the event gave Cardinal Cupich an opportunity to speak about immigration to 30,000 people who may not have heard him otherwise. “So many of the undocumented have for decades been connected to us,” he said during his homily. “They are here not by invasion, but by invitation—an invitation to harvest the fruits of the earth that feed our families; an invitation to clean our tables, homes and hotel rooms; an invitation to landscape our lawns; and yes, even an invitation to care for our children and elders.”
And while the event was not created to rally the youth, the pope did offer, in a pre-recorded video, words of encouragement to young people. “As you grow up together,” he said, “you may realize—especially having lived through the time of the pandemic—times of isolation, great difficulty, sometimes even difficulties in your families, or in our world today. Sometimes it may be that the context of your life has not given you the opportunity to live the faith, to live as participants in a faith community, and I’d like to take this opportunity to invite each one of you to look into your own hearts, to recognize that God is present and that, perhaps in many different ways, God is reaching out to you, calling you, inviting you to know his Son Jesus Christ.”
The simple celebration at the ballfield was not created to address any of these or other issues of poverty or alienation or marginalization but just to give thanks and to celebrate and lift the host into the open air. So simple and sweet.
But in doing those things, in celebrating and consecrating, it did in fact address and impact “the realities of the day.” Whether directly in words or indirectly through whatever energy one true act of worship sends into the universe, something profound happened on behalf of that city and our world. The “ephemera” of Catholicism matters. In ways no one can quantify, it makes a difference in the hard things at play in society today.
Beauty and social protest and vaccines and name your wonderful earth-shattering thing, they all save the world. And, in one way or another, people in White Sox gear celebrating a pope and worshipping Jesus Christ do, too.
