CHICAGO –
The old parish church buildings on Chicago’s far South Side where Pope Leo XIV grew up, attended grammar school and launched his career as a priest are now vacated and in disrepair, a victim of the sometimes painful changes within the Roman Catholic Church since he was a boy.
Even so, the derelict structures stand as a silent reminder to the new pontiff’s deep, longstanding ties to the city and the second-largest Catholic archdiocese in the United States.
Former Cardinal Robert Prevost stunned his hometown on Thursday when the Vatican announced that the 69-year-old Chicago native had been chosen as the first U.S.-born pontiff in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.
