Da Pope and Da City

 by David G. Duggan ©

www.virtueonline.org

May 11, 2025

Chicago’s two most powerful politicians, Mayor Brandon Johnson and Gov. Jabba Pritzker probably couldn’t get elected dog-catcher if they ran outside of this state. The crime, high taxes and pathetic services Chicago and Illinois citizens receive for their tax dollars have made this city and state almost unlivable. So leave it to the Catholic church to reach into the nether regions of Chicago’s long love affair with Roman Catholicism to elect a native son as the holy father.

There is some debate whether Robert Prevost, who took the name Leo XIV, is a real Chicagoan. Pictures of his now-vacant childhood home show a Dolton, IL address. While there are some descendants of French ancestry some 100 miles southwest of Chicago in Marseilles and LaSalle (their ancestors came after the Revolutions of 1848), Prevost claims Creole heritage from New Orleans. He also claims to be a White Sox fan, though that team has been dying to leave Chicago for the last 40 years and stayed only because their owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, cajoled his law school classmate, Gov. Jim Thompson, to build him a new stadium. And now Reinsdorf is threatening to leave again. Nashville, or Indianapolis I’m told could use a team of perpetual losers.

Other ironies abound. Prevost is the second successive “ordered” Catholic priest to be named pope, after a gap of almost 100 years (Franciscan Pius X died in 1914). In the middle ages it was quite common for a pope to be named from a religious order but it fell out of favor probably because the church didn’t want to be seen as inbred or creating a special path to the papacy. Prevost is an Augustinian, often regarded as the most austere of all the orders (even more so than the Jesuits), and that hated reformer, Martin Luther, was an Augustinian who famously said: “that if ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I.” Sola gratia, Luther discovered.

Then there is his choice of papal name. His immediate namesake predecessor, Leo XIII, who “reigned” from 1878-1903 (one of the longest tenures in Vatican history) issued the seminal papal encyclical: Rerum Novarum, “Of New Things.” Essentially a defense of the right of workers to unionize and a disavowal of the perceived alliance between Europe’s aristocracy and the church, “Rerum Novarum” became a rallying cry for traditionalists. One of the subtexts of Andre Gide’s “Les Caves du Vatican” is that the real Leo XIII was kidnapped and an imposter was put in the role who upended Catholic doctrine that the faith does not require class warfare. Conspiracy theories have long legs.

And the Augustinians haven’t been immune from accusations of childhood sexual abuse. In fact, in Chicago, the hotbed of abuse claims (Cardinal Bernardin was well-traveled on Halsted Street, the center of Chicago’s gay culture and used his seminary, Our Lady of the Lake in suburban Mundelein, as a recruiting ground for those of like inclination), the Augustinians have been quite closed-mouth about their own transgressions. Prevost has been accused of stonewalling two investigations: one in Chicago and another in Peru (where the victims were women, wonder of wonders).

Before the Conclave met, a picture of Donald Trump as pope circulated on his social media platform. Catholics world-wide are probably relieved that didn’t come to pass, but be careful what you wish for. Long live the pope.

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