Illustration by Tabi Walters
Local Catholics responded with surprise and pleasure to the news of Chicago native Robert Prevost’s election as Pope Leo XIV.
Fr. Seamus Kettner of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church recalls that when he was in seminary, the students “all joked, ‘When’s the day we’re going to see an American pope?’ I don’t think any of us thought we’d see it in our time.”
Fr. Dan Dixon of St. Mary Student Parish points out that Prevost’s first ordained post was at St. Clare of Montefalco Parish in Grosse Pointe Park. “People are very excited about feeling a connection with him,” Dixon says.
At St. Thomas the Apostle, staffer Cory Lakatos was amazed to learn that the pope attended a seminary high school near his own home in Holland, Michigan. “I know the spot very well!” he exclaims.
At St. Francis, a parishioner shared a photo of himself with the future pope when Prevost was a cardinal. “That was pretty special,” Kettner says. And some Villanova grads in the congregation have been “very excited” to learn that he attended their university.
As a priest, Kettner says, his biggest hope is that the excitement around Leo’s election starts conversations, “especially with people that are no longer going to church … inviting them, ‘Do you think it might be time to maybe come back and try church again?’ … I hope it’s a way we can bridge conversation without being judgmental.”
Longtime St. Mary’s parishioner Lorraine “Rainey” Laney emails that she’s pleased about Leo’s long tenure in South America and his focus on “serving others in fact and act.” She writes that he “makes me grateful that we have an American representing the best of who we are (in my opinion)—kind, funny, capable, accessible, responsible, grounded/formed in U.S. culture, and globally formed.”
As for where Leo the 14th might lead his church, “I think it’s still kind of early to discern,” Kettner says. “He lived a long, long time in Peru and then in Italy. So I think we’re all just still in the midst of getting to know our new Pope Leo.”