In Pope Leo’s home town, civic pride meets a sense of higher purpose

There, in his strong Chicago accent, Bishop Lawrence J. Sullivan told about 200 worshippers that, while locals rightly took great pride in one of their own becoming the pontiff, there were larger, less parochial matters at hand.

“Having a shepherd matters. Having someone to guide us as a universal church matters,” he said. “And so, far more importantly than celebrating a home town hero, and far more important than celebrating the fact that we have a first pope from the United States, the real celebration is that God has given us a shepherd, and that we gather here today knowing that, as our shepherd, he is in need of our prayers.”

Pope Leo’s father was a school teacher and principal, and his mother a librarian at a Catholic high school. She also used to volunteer at Holy Name. Sullivan said she was a “wonderful, wonderful person”, who shared her sense of God’s love through reading and helping children.

He said he watched the white smoke blow above St Peter’s Square on a television at the church office with his team. “There was just such an air of excitement,” he told reporters following the service. “But again, we would have been very, very excited no matter who was chosen.”

A few blocks from St Mary of the Assumption in Dolton, half an hour south of the city centre, is Prevost’s childhood home – a modest, single-storey brick house in a pretty street that sold for $US66,000 ($103,000) last year. The property was recently back on the market, with the owners certain to cash in.

“It’s been pretty wild,” real estate agent Steve Budzik told local media. Offers are pouring in, though the listing has been taken down for now.

But for Donna Sagna, who lives next door, the news brought opportunity of a different kind. A devout Catholic and school teacher, she has been involved in “peace walks” remembering young people killed by gang violence, an endemic problem in this notorious part of Chicago. With the world’s media camped outside, she erected a cross on the lawn bearing the faces of victims. One of her own students was shot dead, she said.

For Sagna, the Pope’s former home is the scene of the violence, drug dealing and hardship she has witnessed in the eight years she has lived there. She is taking Pope Leo’s rise as a sign that God is aware of her community’s struggles, and she is praying for more help.

“I feel that the Pope – because he lived in that same house – the Pope is close to those that have mental health issues, he’s close to those that are poor. God is close to the poor and to the broken-hearted,” she says.

“Because the Pope lived here, it helps me to see that God is even concerned with the people that are doing the crimes, if that makes any sense.”

Here in Chicago, a heavily Democratic city and a so-called “sanctuary city” for undocumented migrants, many people instinctively mention Prevost’s decades in Peru, of which he is also a citizen. They are also hopeful he will continue the more progressive bent instigated by his predecessor, Pope Francis.

Laura Spingola, a born and raised Chicagoan who has attended Holy Name Cathedral for more than 25 years, said the variety of Prevost’s experience would be a boon for the world’s 1.5 billion Catholics, who ran the gamut from urban to rural, rich to poor.

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“I think people were very concerned prior to this [papal] election, and they thought: is it possible that the efforts of Pope Francis would be negated, and we would go back to being very conservative?” she said.

“So far, we understand that, no, we are going to continue with the really important concerns of poverty, of marginalisation, that Pope Francis really began, in a way.”

Bishop Sullivan discouraged reporters from prognosticating on the new Pope’s politics. “I don’t really think popes define themselves in those ways,” he said.

“I think his one and only concern is care for the poor, being a voice for the voiceless and to bring God’s love into the world. I don’t think he fits anywhere at all on a political spectrum.”