The New Yorker:

A historically Catholic American city considers the election of Leo XIV, a home-town Pontiff.

By Geraldo Cadava

In Chicago, people are very excited about Pope Leo XIV, or Father Bob, as those who’ve known Robert Francis Prevost a long time reflexively call him. It’s titillating to imagine Pope Leo roaming the city, chowing down on an Italian-beef sandwich, scarfing a deep-dish pizza, and taking in a White Sox game. “Da Pope.”

Many Chicagoans I’ve spoken with have shared their six-degrees-of-separation stories. Mimi Cowan, the Field Museum’s director of government affairs and sponsored programs, sent me a screenshot of a text message from her parents: “Tom & I have a seriously close connection to the new Pope!!! One of our closest friends, Keith, has a cousin who is a Jesuit priest in Chicago. He is best friends with the Pope & Pope’s brother! They went to school together! Keith figures he’s got a good chance to party with the Pope if he comes to Chicago to see his brother & close friends!” Bonnie Clapp is a server at the Kerryman, an Irish bar and restaurant in the River North neighborhood which sold discounted shots of Malört, a liqueur famous in Chicago, to those wanting to celebrate Leo. She told me that she overheard a woman at a table she was waiting on say, “I’m kind of a big deal—I’m related to the Pope.”

César Izquierdo, the owner of Taste of Peru, a popular restaurant in the Rogers Park neighborhood, said that he cried as he looked at a photo of his mother upon learning that the new Pope was from Chicago and Peru. Pope Leo spent more than two decades living in northern Peru, first as a young missionary in Chulucanas and Trujillo, almost continuously from 1985 to 1998, and then again from 2015 to 2023, when he served as the Bishop of Chiclayo. In this respect, the Pope is hardly an exception, as many Chicago pastors have been sent to do missionary work in Latin America, according to the historian Deborah Kanter. But because of his love for the country, Leo became a naturalized Peruvian citizen in 2015.

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