I don’t think I’m the only Chicagoan who finds it strangely exhilarating to realize that, over the past 60 or so years, I might have ridden in the same el car as Robert Prevost or walked past him at a mall or sat nearby at a White Sox game. A priest friend tells me that he once attended a church meeting with Prevost. My brother-in-law’s cousin was in the seminary with him.
In his new book about the man who, earlier this year, became Pope Leo XIV, Christopher White notes that, after marrying, Prevost’s parents Louis and Mildred bought a modest home at 212 E. 141st Place in south suburban Dolton. That’s where Prevost and his two older brothers grew up, attending Mass at Saint Mary of the Assumption Church, less than a mile away in Chicago.
The house and the church, now shuttered, are about 30 miles away from where I live in Edgewater. I could get there in about an hour.
You’ve probably seen the group photo of Prevost among a bunch of friends at Aurelio’s Pizza in Homewood where he looks like just a guy, any guy you might meet at a Chicago pizza place, with a bit of a paunch, in an open-collar, short-sleeve dress shirt.
Now, that guy is Pope Leo XIV, and, seven months after his election, the world is still trying to figure out who this Chicagoan is. White, the former Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter, writes:
Leo’s election as the 267th leader of the Catholic Church is a study in contrasts. The demure American pope versus the bombastic U.S. president. The Vatican outsider who spent just a few years in the Roman Curia before taking control of the entire operation versus an entrenched bureaucracy eager to maintain its power. The humble Peruvian pastor versus the pomp and circumstance many still associate with the papacy.
“A Steeliness and a Gentleness”
White had a chance to interview Cardinal Robert Prevost on July 12, 2023, shortly after he’d been appointed by Pope Francis to head the Vatican office in charge of the appointment of bishops. And he found a clergyman “with a steady and even, at times, soft-spoken style.” And one who turned the tables on him, asking, “What fuels so much of the resistance to Pope Francis in the United States?”
“The question,” White writes, “was not one of obfuscation, but one of genuine curiosity.” The newly named cardinal was looking for some context about the American church because, although Chicago-born, he had spent only about a third of his life in the US. Another third was in Italy, and another third in Peru where he was a pastor and later a bishop.
Anna Rowlands, a British theologian and advisor to the Vatican’s synod office, got to know Prevost while they sat through roundtable meetings together at the synods of 2023 and 2024. She told White:
“There’s a steeliness there that one might not necessarily perceive because of his gentleness.”
“He didn’t appear to be part of any particular faction. Yet he was a contributing member. There’s a steeliness there that one might not necessarily perceive because of his gentleness.”
Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy is a reporter’s book, written fast and on deadline, the epitome of the truism that news is the first draft of history.
Leo was elected last May 8, and, just two months later, White’s book was published by Chicago’s Loyola Press on July 15. It’s a work in which White has stitched together his own reporting with information gathered from a wide variety of sources, including other news writers. In the long run, it will be superseded by works by writers with the time and access to get deeper into the story of Leo and the conclave that made him pope as well as by books that will be able to examine what Leo actually does as pope.
Nonetheless, White’s book is an attractive and accessible look at the transition from Francis to Leo, filled with lively journalistic details as well as astute insights and suggestions about the road the new pontiff will take.
The book is written in three parts: (1) the story of Francis and his death, (2) an account of the conclave and, taking up more than half of the book, (3) an examination of the life of Prevost and Leo's future actions.
Lively Details
With his reporter’s eye, White is able to spot and pass along to the reader a last insight about Francis’s simplicity: “Final images of the pope in his coffin before it was sealed showed him dressed in simple vestments and still wearing his scuffed-up black orthopedic shoes.”
Similarly, he notes that the cardinals who were coming to Rome to vote for the new pontiff were at a disadvantage because they hadn’t had many chances to meet each other during Francis’s 12-year reign. In fact, they even needed name tags:
As they entered the meeting hall or encountered one another on the Borgo Pio, cardinals could be seen greeting each other and then quickly looking down at each other’s name tags, making a mental note of whom they had just spoken with, some of them meeting for the first time.
Since World War II, at least, the idea that an American could be elected pope seemed to be a non-starter. With the United States wielding so much power in the world, it didn’t seem to make sense to give the reins of the largest Christian church with its more than 1.2 billion members to another American.
And, then, of course, President Donald Trump, just a week after attending Francis’s funeral, posted on social media an AI-generated image of himself in papal vestments—Pope Donald!—a move not likely to make the cardinals feel especially warm toward the United States
Nonetheless, when the first puffs of white smoke emerged over St. Peter’s to signal the election of a new pope, White found himself making a bold guess.
He was sitting with Bishop Robert Barron, the news-savvy founder of the Word on Fire media organization and a strong conservative voice within the American church. Barron said that, since only four ballots had been taken, he was betting the new pontiff would be one of the frontrunners, the Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, a lifelong diplomat who was Francis’s top deputy as the Vatican secretary of state.
When I told him my gut was going with Prevost, he laughed, dismissing the notion as a fantasy that there could ever be a pope from the United States.
When I told him my gut was going with Prevost, he laughed, dismissing the notion as a fantasy that there could ever be a pope from the United States.
White didn’t yet know he’d hit the nail on the head, but, inside, Leo XIV was greeting each of the cardinals individually, and, as Cardinal Wilton Gregory, a Chicago native and the first African American cardinal, reached the pope, he was choked with tears, saying, “From one South Sider of Chicago to another, I promise you my respect, my fidelity, and my love.”
“I’ll Just Ask Him”
Following Leo’s election, Wrigley Field posted a photo of the new pope and asserted, “Hey, Chicago, he’s a Cubs fan!”
Which, to South Siders, sounded like sure heresy.
White recounts that reporters inundated Leo’s fellow Augustinian Father Joseph Farrell with requests for information about the new pope, including his favorite baseball team.
“Fine,” Farrell thought. “I’ll just ask him.” He fired off a quick text message, figuring there was no harm in it. The response came through soon thereafter, a one-word text from the new pope: “Sox.”
That was proof if anyone needed it that the new pope is a true Chicagoan and knows how important that question is in his hometown.
And many have noted that the team’s prospects are already looking better. Earlier this month, the White Sox won the coveted first pick in the 2026 Major League Baseball amateur draft. Maybe prayers from the Vatican played some role in that.
Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy by Christopher White is available at bookstores and through the Loyola Press website.
