Opinion: My hometown pope

Pope Leo XIV greets followers for the archetypal clip aft being elected pope. Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images

Yes, I cried erstwhile I heard that Pope Leo XIV is from Chicago. And I thought of St. Peter's Church successful Chicago's Loop, wherever I utilized to spell to Mass present and then.

It was usually a 5:30 Mass. Many attending were cleaning and attraction people, already successful their enactment clothes. They stopped successful to commune connected their mode into work, arsenic suit-wearing bureau workers from the skyscrapers passed them, heading home.

Marta, a cleaner successful our bureau building, had told maine astir what was called "the cleaning unit Mass." Marta was from Poland. When we each recited, on with the priest, "I judge successful God, the Father almighty, Creator of eden and earth…" you could perceive accents astir america from each implicit the world: Poland, Mexico, Italy, China, Lithuania, Ireland. It enactment a glimpse of the satellite into our words.

The Masses were not large. And truthful they felt personal, and the faces became familiar. Most of america were connected our own, similar Marta, stopping successful to commune earlier her worknight began, oregon similar me, astatine the extremity of a workday. When we gave 1 different the motion of peace—that portion of the Mass wherever radical scope retired to those astir them, clasp their hands, and say, "Peace beryllium with you…"—I sometimes wondered wherever other could you stock specified a poignant infinitesimal with radical from each implicit the world? We mightiness person each prayed for antithetic things, but wished each different bid successful our lives.

I remember, too, the joyousness that Marta and others from Poland felt erstwhile Pope John Paul II, the archetypal Polish pope, came connected an authoritative sojourn to Chicago, successful 1979.  I enactment a rosary from Marta successful my overgarment pouch erstwhile I covered the Mass successful Grant Park, and erstwhile I returned it to her, she clutched it to her thorax and said, "I consciousness him here."

When Pope Leo XIV came retired to talk from the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica connected Thursday, I thought of that different St. Peter's, successful Chicago. The moving radical astatine those Masses contiguous mightiness spot Pope Leo, erstwhile known connected the South Side arsenic Father Bob, and archer themselves, "He has walked among us."