Category: 2025 News

CHICAGO (OSV News) – As Pope Leo XIV nears his 70th birthday Sept. 14, those closest to the American-born pontiff say they knew, very early on, that he was in for lifelong service to the church.

There was not one specific instance when as a child Robert Francis Prevost, who was born in Chicago and raised in its south suburbs, decided to become a priest, according to his brother John.

“From the youngest age, he (just) knew that that’s what he was going to do. It wasn’t that there was ever a doubt in anyone’s mind. Even going to kindergarten he knew that he was going to be a priest,” John Prevost told OSV News.

Prevost said he remembered his youngest brother was 5 or 6 years old when he first started playing priest and offering pretend Masses. Young Robert Prevost used an ironing board covered with a white sheet as an altar, a plastic cup for a chalice, and gave out Necco candy wafer discs for pretend Communion.

“It was that early, I think … and then there was never a doubt that’s what he was going to do,” said John Prevost, 71. “It was a true vocation, I guess.”

In early July, Pope Leo told about 600 children, including 300 from Ukraine, at a summer camp in Italy that he was an altar boy from the age of about 6, serving the 6:30 a.m. Mass — on Fridays, according to John Prevost — at the family’s home parish church, St. Mary of the Assumption, in suburban Dolton, Illinois.

“So even serving at Mass was something we really loved,” the pope told the youngsters. “Because even as a child, I was taught that Jesus is always close, that our best friend is always Jesus and that the Mass was a way to find, let’s say, this friend — to be with Jesus — even before receiving first Communion.”

He recounted serving at first in Latin and then later in English (with changes instituted following the Second Vatican Council to celebrate Mass in the vernacular).
“Still, what mattered wasn’t so much the language of the celebration but really the experience of meeting other kids who also served at Mass together — that sense of friendship – and above all, being close to Jesus in the church,” he said.

Being an altar server has remained a pivotal influence for vocations to the priesthood prior to entering seminary, according to the report on the 2024 ordination class from the Washington-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. The latest survey includes data from 2006 through 2024 showing an average of 73% were first altar servers in that period.

Another significant statistic in the report was that in the 2024 ordination class, 82% had both parents who were Catholic.

Prevost, who talks to the pope daily, said he thought the influence on Pope Leo’s faith life “had to be (from) both parents.” Also, he said, two aunts – his mother’s siblings – were religious sisters, and clergy were close friends of the family.

“We went on several vacations with various priests. So he was around priests, not only at church or at school, but also at home when they would, for example, come to dinner or travel when they went on vacation. It was a constant thing,” explained Prevost, a retired Catholic school principal.

The three Prevost brothers grew up in a deeply Catholic home on the edge of Chicago, where the rosary was said every night before dinner and fish was served every Friday (being a day to abstain from meat). The boys’ mother, Mildred, worked at their parish helping set up the school library and was later librarian at the Augustinian Mendel Catholic High School, where the pope’s older brothers graduated. Their father, Louis Marius Prevost, a retired Navy man and suburban public school superintendent, also worked for the Chicago Archdiocese’s schools after he retired from the suburban school system.

As for picking a religious order, John Prevost said that when Robert was in eighth grade, following several home visits from various orders’ vocation directors and also a diocesan visit, he chose the Order of St. Augustine. Prevost said he didn’t know what exactly drew his brother to the Augustinians.

Augustinian spirituality is deeply rooted in unity, truth and love. The men’s branch of the order, known as “men of heart,” has a strong emphasis on community and service to the church and to others.

The 13-year old then went off to the Augustinians’ minor seminary in Holland, Michigan, where he made some lifelong friends whom he would go to college with and be ordained with.

“Six-hundred-fifty acres of land, one mile of beach, a beautiful facility,” said Augustinian Father Bill Lego, describing the school. He was one of only five in the pope’s Holland seminary class of 60 who went on to become a priest. “So we lived away for high school. They gave us … lower tuition and the education was great.”

Father Lego is pastor at St. Turibius Parish on Chicago’s southwest side where most of the Midwest Augustinians serve. He called his high school years “a good formation” in the faith.

He said schooling at Augustinian-run Villanova University followed, where Pope Leo majored in mathematics, and it was after college, during “a very special year” in novitiate in St. Louis that religious life became solidified for them.

“We kept journals, and we had a spiritual companion that we would talk to during the year. And we’d have classes on Augustine, and we would talk about the faith,” he told OSV News, adding, “It was a very, very good year.”

Father Lego, 70, said there was a silent retreat that year for the novices to discern whether they would take the next steps of professing temporary vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. He said the future pope told him he had a profound experience and he himself also had one. Father Lego then described walking the grounds of a nearby cemetery for deceased religious sisters during their retreat.

“You read the headstones. Sister Mary Grace: God gave 70 years of vocation. I’m thinking, I can’t figure out if I want one. Here’s somebody in the ground with 70 (years) going forward. I can’t decide on one, you know. I’m like ‘Lord, you better do something,'” he exclaimed.

At that time he asked his friend “Bob” Prevost if he was taking any of those silent walks. But the future pope said he developed a blister from walking and “so he took that as the way God moved through him in his life, to have him be more settled and quiet. And I am sure that experience, as mine was, going through novitiate, is probably what has kept us Augustinians.”

The following year, the novices went to Catholic Theological Union in Chicago to finish graduate theology studies. Then, Father Lego detailed Pope Leo’s trajectory within the order as “always destined for leadership.”

The pope became a canon lawyer some years after being ordained in 1982. He was called to work in canon law in the Diocese of Chulucanas in the impoverished mountains of northern Peru, also teaching the subject and theology at the Augustinian seminary there in the late ’80s through ’90s.

Then returning home, he became superior of the Midwest Augustinians (1999-2001), was then elected prior general for the entire order (2001-2013) based in Rome, while traveling the world. Then in 2014 Pope Francis appointed him administrator, then bishop of Chiclayo, Peru. He then became cardinal in 2023 and headed the Dicastery for Bishops until he was elected pope May 8.

Retired Chulucanas Bishop Daniel Turley, a fellow Midwest Augustinian, who spent 53 years in northern Peru and was the future pope’s superior for part of his time there, said he never had occasion to speak with the pope about his vocation.

“But knowing him and knowing his journey as an Augustinian, I think he was letting himself be led by the Spirit, by the Lord,” said Bishop Turley. “And being very open, because so many providential things had happened, that he had no control over. Things were just falling in place. It’s like he was being prepared by God to become the pope.”

Pope Leo’s brother John Prevost had similar words.

“The Holy Spirit is at work here. This is just from beginning to end, in a sense, unbelievable, that this road has gone this way for him. And he’s not failed at anything. He’s done well with everything he’s been given to do,” he said.

“And whether he likes it or not, he sits down and gets it done, because there must be times where he says, ‘I can’t do this,’ but then he does it,” Prevost said. “I mean, look at him in the films now … he’s having a ball. He’s enjoying what he’s doing so far.”

(OSV News) – Those who are religiously unaffiliated are less likely to hold spiritual beliefs or engage in religious practices — but in a number of countries, many such “nones” have nuanced beliefs, and still hold there’s an unseen spiritual reality and life after death, despite their negative views of religion’s impact on society, according to a new survey.

On Sept. 4, Pew Research Center released its latest findings on “nones” — self-described atheists, agnostics and those who cite their religion as “nothing in particular” — based on nationally representative surveys of 22 nations across the globe, including the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Drawing from surveys that encompassed 36 nations, Pew focused on the 22-nation subset in which “nones” constituted a large enough sample to analyze separately.

Across those 22 nations, Pew found that “about a fifth or more of ‘nones’ believe in life after death.”

At the same time, those segments can vary widely among nations, with 19% of Hungary’s “nones” claiming either a definite or probable possibility of life after death, and 65% of the demographic doing the same in Peru. The South American nation was among seven of the 22 nations Pew studied where more than 50% of “nones” said they believe in life after death.

Pew also found that “large shares of ‘nones’ in some countries say ‘there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it.'” It pointed to Mexico and Brazil, where respectively 61% and 65% of those who are religiously unaffiliated “express this belief.”

“Many religiously unaffiliated adults also express belief in God,” said Pew, highlighting South Africa (77%), Brazil (92%), Colombia (86%) and Chile (69%).

However, Pew noted, that trend isn’t in evidence in Europe and Australia.

In the latter, only 18% of “nones” profess a belief in God, while in Sweden the number is just 10% and even less (9%) in Hungary.

In the U.S., less than half (45%) of “nones” admit belief in God, according to a 2023 Pew survey.

Many religiously unaffiliated people tend to believe that animals “can have spirits or spiritual energies,” said Pew. It noted at least 75% of “nones” in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Greece share this view.

Importantly, Pew underscored that “nonbelief isn’t always the main reason people have no religious affiliation.”

Pew noted its 2023 U.S. survey found that 30% of “nones” cited “bad experiences with religious people” as “an extremely or very important reason they are nonreligious.”

A roughly equal share in the same survey (32%) pointed to nonbelief in God or a higher power as why they identify as “nones.” But an even larger number (47%) shared they identify as “nones” because they “don’t like religious organizations.”

While “sizable shares of ‘nones'” in Pew’s 22-nation subset do admit to some spiritual beliefs, Pew also found “some express a more consistently secular outlook” that rejects belief in God, the afterlife and a transcendent spiritual reality.

That’s the case in Sweden, where more than half (52%) of adults have no religious affiliation, and 28% of the total adult population affirms an across-the-board secular outlook on those points.

Adults in Australia (24%), the Netherlands (24%) and South Korea (23%) share similar across-the-board views, noted Pew.

By comparison, just 8% of the U.S. public (where 29% are religiously unaffiliated) express a consistently secular opinion on God, the afterlife and spiritual reality. Similarly only 14% of Canadians (out of 41% religiously unaffiliated) and only 2% of Mexicans (out of 20% religiously unaffiliated) hold such consistently secular views.

Pew said that in “nearly all” of the 22 countries it focused on, the largest group of “nones” are those who list their religious affiliation as “nothing in particular,” rather than identifying as atheists or agnostics. In most cases, that share — especially in Latin America and Asia — outranked the combined totals of atheists and agnostics.

Two exceptions were Greece and Italy, where Pew found atheism to be “the most common affiliation among ‘nones.'”

The other exception was France, where atheists were the largest single group (21%) of “nones,” but were not a majority. The remainder of France’s 44% religiously unaffiliated population identified as either “nothing in particular” (17%) or “agnostic” (6%).

Among the countries Pew studied, it found “adults ages 18 to 39 are much more likely than older adults to identify as ‘nones.'”

Generally, “adults with more education are somewhat more likely than those with less education to be religiously unaffiliated,” said Pew.

Pew also found that “among religiously unaffiliated adults, women are generally more likely than men to hold most of the religious and spiritual beliefs asked about in the survey.”

Women who are “nones” also are typically “more likely than men to believe in reincarnation,” said Pew.

But as for belief in God, religiously unaffiliated women only outpaced their male counterparts in “four of the 15 countries with sufficient sample sizes to analyze differences by gender.”

Pew’s data also found “many ‘nones’ express negative views about religion’s influence on society.” It found religiously unaffiliated adults in 12 of the 22 countries were more likely to say religion encourages intolerance, with nearly three out of four “nones” in Australia, Sweden and Germany holding this view. A majority of “nones” in every country claimed religion “encourages superstitious thinking.”

 

“Across the countries surveyed, a median of 53% say religion mostly hurts society, while a median of 38% say it mostly helps,” said Pew.

 

In addition, Pew found that “majorities of ‘nones’ in nearly every country we analyzed do not think it is important for their national leader to have strong religious beliefs.”

 

Pew’s data also highlighted the complex and at times puzzling nature of religious self-identification.

 

In the United Kingdom, for example, 8% of atheists expressed a belief in God. Pew noted the inconsistency, explaining that “small shares of respondents in many places say they are atheists in answer to a religious identification question, yet they say they believe in God or affirm other religious or spiritual beliefs in response to other questions.”

 

Similarly, a number of self-identified Christians in several nations do not profess a belief in God. In Sweden, for example, “just 58% of self-identified Christians say they believe in God,” said Pew.

 

Pew noted that some scholars of religion think such inconsistency “actually is the norm, not the exception, when one looks deeply into the religious identities, beliefs and practices of people around the world.”

 

Pew’s data was collected in several surveys conducted in 2023 and 2024, with the overall combined number of respondents exceeding 84,000.

 

The study was part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which Pew said “analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world.”

SCRANTON – In observance of National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month in September, the Most Rev. Joseph C. Bambera, Bishop of Scranton, will celebrate a Mass for Suicide Healing and Remembrance on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025, at 12:15 p.m. at the Cathedral of Saint Peter, located at 315 Wyoming Avenue, Scranton.

The Mass will serve to remember loved ones lost to suicide, and to promote healing for those who grieve their passing.

Those attending the Mass will be invited to offer a flower in memory of a loved one who died from suicide. All are welcome.

In the United States, nearly 50,000 people died by suicide in 2023, which amounts to about one person every 11 minutes, according to numbers listed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The government agency also reported that an estimated 12.8 million adults seriously considered suicide, 3.7 million planned a suicide attempt and 1.5 million attempted suicide in 2022.

The Cathedral Mass will be broadcast live on CTV: Catholic Television of the Diocese of Scranton and livestream on the Diocese of Scranton website, YouTube channel and across all Diocesan social media platforms.

For more information, please contact the Diocesan Office for Parish Life at (570) 207-2213.

ASSISI, Italy (CNS) – Soon-to-be St. Carlo Acutis is a fresh “shoot” budding from the 800-year-old spiritual “vine” of Sts. Francis and Clare in Assisi, said the rector of the shrine housing the millennial teenager’s tomb.

“Assisi is clearly known for St. Francis and St. Clare, and this explosion of holiness in the 13th century is still incredibly fruitful today,” Father Marco Gaballo, rector of the Shrine of the Renunciation, told Catholic News Service in late August.

Pope Leo XIV was scheduled to canonize the teen Sept. 7 at the Vatican, together with Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati of Turin.

Born in London in 1991 and raised in Milan, Blessed Acutis spent most of his vacation time in Assisi, where his family owned another home. Just as he was very active in his parish and Jesuit-run high school in Milan, he also dedicated himself to the church community in Assisi, learning about St. Francis and being inspired by the saint’s respect for creation and dedication to the poor, according to the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints’ website.

“Carlo chose to be buried here,” in Assisi, because of his strong attraction and connection to St. Francis, Father Gaballo said.

“This is the novelty of our time,” he said. “Carlo represents a shoot budding from this long history of holiness that, after eight centuries, still involves young people and knows how to attract and produce new pathways” to holiness.

Blessed Acutis, who once said everyone is born as a unique original, “but many die as photocopies,” was himself a “true disciple of St. Francis. He did not copy him, he was inspired by him,” seeking to share the Gospel “in his own way, in the age of the internet, as a teenager,” he said.

According to the Vatican office for saints’ causes, Blessed Acutis was devoted to Mary, recited the rosary daily, helped the poor and homeless, edited and ran the website of the parish of Santa Maria Segreta in Milan, where he also taught catechism and prepared children for confirmation, and organized the website of the Pontifical Academy “Cultorum Martyrum.”

“His holiness seems truly accessible, close to everyone because, after all, he also played on his computer, swam, played sports, went to school, but lived with his heart completely oriented toward Jesus,” Father Gaballo said.

“We have this beautiful message that even a person who decides to choose Christ completely as the only thing in their heart, they then find a full life in real life,” whether it be in the 21st century or the Middle Ages when St. Francis lived and “made sacrifices that, I believe, are impossible for others to repeat today,” he said.

Blessed Acutis is buried in a room — now a shrine — dedicated to remembering St. Francis’ “renunciation,” when he publicly disrobed and renounced his family’s wealth to live in poverty and humble service to God.

Just as the 13th-century saint stripped himself of his earthly possessions, the teen was stripped of his health when he fell ill with leukemia, and he offered his life to God; he died at the age of 15 in 2006.

These two acts of renunciation, made centuries apart, illustrate a core message of the shrine, the priest said, which is that following Jesus happens on a “path of self-denial, diminishing one’s ego, selfishness and negative human impulses that destroy humanity, the environment, nature and society.”

“When one embraces this renunciation, this difficult path, which is hard at first, then on the other side there is love, which is being clothed in the glory” of God’s light, he said.

The blessed’s radical acceptance of God’s plan, even if it meant letting go of family, friends and earthly life, provided profound support for one pilgrim visiting the tomb.

Massimo Mennelli, from the parish of St. Joseph the Artisan in San Severo, Italy, was one of the thousands of visitors to Assisi Aug. 21. He told CNS that “this young man’s life is a great lesson for us, for us Catholics. He is a great guide.”

Mennelli and his wife, Fiorella Sacco, are catechists who prepare parents for their child’s baptism, he said. “In every catechesis, we cannot help but give examples from his story, from his life, because I consider Carlo Acutis one of the greatest gifts that the Lord could have given, excuse me,” he paused with tears in his eyes, “to humanity in the third millennium.”

Mennelli said he gets choked up because Blessed Acutis’ life “prepared me for a very difficult family situation” of losing his brother a year and a half ago.

He and his dying brother faced the tragedy “in a truly God-centered way,” he said, “thanks to Carlo, who taught us to trust in God. This was a great sign of the Lord for us: we are at peace.”

“My brother is now in heaven. I hope he has met Carlo, who gave us this great strength and this great testimony that the Lord loves us and cares for us, and that when we reach his kingdom, we will attain eternal peace,” Mennelli said, holding up a handmade doll of the blessed his wife makes with other volunteers at their parish.

Sacco said they wanted a doll for kids so that instead of “heroes of war, they would have a hero of peace,” adding that all the proceeds go to help their parish and charitable initiatives in their town and abroad.

An image of the Eucharist is sewn on top of the doll’s red shirt right over his heart, she said, and inside his backpack, there is a small handmade rosary with “15 beads in memory of the 15 years he lived.”

About 1 million people visited just the Church of St. Mary Major, where the shrine and Blessed Acutis’ tomb are located, in 2024. Those numbers are expected to be much higher in 2025 because of the huge spike in visitors who came to Italy for the Holy Year and especially for his expected canonization in April, the Jubilee of Youth at the end of July and early August, and his actual canonization in September.

(OSV News) – As the Israel-Hamas war nears the two-year mark, Catholic leaders have headed to Jerusalem, the Palestinian West Bank and Israel on a pastoral visit.

The delegation is headed by Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, who serves as vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Msgr. Peter I. Vaccari, president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association-Pontifical Mission; and members of the Knights of Columbus, including Supreme Knight Patrick E. Kelly and Supreme Secretary John A. Marrella.

In a Sept. 2 press release issued by CNEWA-Pontifical Missions, Msgr. Vaccari said the visit was meant to provide accompaniment and solidarity with those suffering from the war, sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel.

To date, more than 63,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry. Some 1,200 Israelis have been slain and more than 5,400 injured. Of the 251 Israeli hostages taken by Hamas that Oct. 7, 50 remain in captivity, with only 20 of them believed to still be alive, with 83 of the hostages confirmed killed to date. More than 100 were released later in 2023; eight were rescued by Israeli forces.

On Aug. 22, the International Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC — a global food security metric used by a consortium of hunger relief agencies — formally declared a famine in Gaza, stating the situation — fomented by aid blockades as well as controversial, often deadly food distribution efforts — was “entirely man-made” and could be “halted and reversed.”

The IPC called for “an immediate, at-scale response,” noting that “any further delay — even by days — will result in a totally unacceptable escalation of famine-related mortality.”

On Aug. 20, Israel’s military disclosed plans to call up 60,000 reservists ahead of a new offensive in Gaza City.

“The Gospel compels us to witness, to stand in solidarity with all those who suffer at the hands of terror, war and famine, to answer the question put to Jesus in the Gospel of St. Luke, ‘And who is my neighbor,'” said Msgr. Vaccari. “By visiting the church of Jerusalem, from which our faith has spread throughout the world, we hope to communicate to our suffering sisters and brothers of our unity in resolve and purpose in assisting them in their time of Golgotha, as we work together to seek justice and advance the cause of lasting peace.”

According to a Sept. 2 press release from CNEWA-Pontifical Missions, the pastoral visit “will include liturgies in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Bethlehem’s Basilica of the Nativity and Nazareth’s Church of the Annunciation, and meetings with leaders of the region’s beleaguered Christian community, which despite its near destruction in Gaza remains a force of good, rushing food, water and medicines to starving families and providing medical attention through its network of maternity clinics and hospital.”

In mid-August, the USCCB’s president, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, had called upon U.S. dioceses to take up a special collection for humanitarian relief for suffering residents of Gaza and surrounding Middle Eastern areas, with funds directed to CNEWA and to Catholic Relief Services, the official humanitarian and development agency of the USCCB.

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, CNEWA-Pontifical Mission has provided more than $1.6 million in aid, thanks to multiple partners throughout North America and Europe spanning a range of faith communities. Of those funds, more than $1.5 million supplied food, medical care and psychosocial counseling for upwards of 36,400 individuals, the agency — founded in 1928 by Pope Pius XI — said in its press release.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The human longing for love is not a sign of weakness but demonstrates that no one is completely self-sufficient and that salvation comes from letting oneself be loved and assisted by God, Pope Leo XIV said.

“No one can save themselves. Life is ‘fulfilled’ not when we are strong, but when we learn how to receive,” the pope told tens of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square Sept. 3 for his weekly general audience.

During the audience, the pope offered special prayers for all the students and teachers who recently returned to school or were about to start a new school year.

“Pray for them, through the intercession of the Blesseds – and soon saints – Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, for the gift of a deep faith in their journey of maturation,” the pope said just days before he was scheduled to preside over the canonizations of the two young Italians.

In his main talk, Pope Leo continued his series of reflections on lessons of hope from the Gospel stories of Jesus’ last days and focused specifically on the 19th chapter of the Gospel of John where Jesus on the cross says, “I thirst.”

“If even the son of God chose not to be self-sufficient, then our thirst too — for love, for meaning, for justice — is a sign not of failure, but of truth,” the pope said.

Jesus’ thirst is not just physical, the pope said; it is “above all the expression of a profound desire: that of love, of relationship, of communion. It is the silent cry of a God who, having wished to share everything of our human condition, also lets himself be overcome by this thirst.”

By not being afraid to ask for something to drink, Jesus “tells us that love, in order to be true, must also learn to ask and not only to give.”

At a time when most societies seem to reward self-sufficiency, efficiency and performance, the pope said, “the Gospel shows us that the measure of our humanity is not given by what we can achieve, but by our ability to let ourselves be loved and, when necessary, even helped.”

Jesus’ cry of thirst, he said, “is ours too. It is the cry of a wounded humanity that seeks living water. And this thirst does not lead us away from God but rather unites us with him.”

Admitting the need for help, “our fragility is a bridge toward heaven,” he said.

“There is nothing more human, nothing more divine, than being able to say: I need,” Pope Leo told the crowd. “Let us not be afraid to ask, especially when it seems to us that we do not deserve. Let us not be ashamed to reach out our hand. It is right there, in that humble gesture, that salvation hides.”

After the audience, members of the Jesus Bikers, a motorcycle club from Germany, and representatives of Missio Austria, the pontifical mission societies in Austria, presented Pope Leo XIV with a modified BMW R18 motorcycle, which he autographed and then sat on.

The bike will be auctioned by Sotheby’s, and Missio Austria will use the money to help build a school for children who work in the mica mines in Madagascar.

CHICAGO (OSV News) – Since Aug. 22, Chicago White Sox fans have been able to easily spot the stadium seat where Pope Leo XIV sat when he watched the first game of the 2005 World Series.

The team put a plaque and markers including the pope’s image on the back of the forest green seat in row 19 of section 140 inside Rate Field on Chicago’s Southside.

“Not only the historical significance of the first pope from the United States, but just the historic significance of any time a new pope is elected and announced, it’s such a momentous occasion,” explained Christine O’Reilly, the White Sox vice president for community relations.

“And the fact that Pope Leo — Father Bob, Bob from (suburban) Dolton — who happened to be a White Sox fan, who happened to be at game one of the World Series, it all just really was something that we couldn’t help not only embrace, but to memorialize,” she said. “So that all of our fans could see it and really share in the overall excitement.”

According to her, tracing back the now famous image of the pope sitting in the stadium, of then-Augustinian Father Robert Francis Prevost (or Father Bob as many called him) dressed in his team’s colors of black and white, was a low-tech endeavor. There was no digital image shot with a smartphone with embedded data, and no need for exact coordinates.

Instead, O’Reilly described, the in-house video camera captured on the big stadium screen Father Bob sitting next to a father and son of a family that to this day still has those same season seats to the White Sox games. After the game, friends inundated the father, Ed Schmidt, with messages on his home phone that they saw him watching the game.

Then, she said, years later when all of Chicago was chattering about their homegrown pope once he was elected May 8, someone mentioned seeing him and Schmidt on those few seconds of video.

“So it was a matter of just going and reviewing the game broadcast footage because they knew from other people telling them that they had seen them on TV,” O’Reilly told OSV News. “And of course, they knew where their season tickets were. So that’s how we were able to determine the actual seat location that then Father Bob, now Pope Leo XIV, was sitting in at the time.”

Having a hometown pope, said O’Reilly, a Catholic, makes the Chicago metro area with a population of 9.4 million feel like a “small, intimate, large city” where people have connections to one another.

She said Pope Leo is “very, very close, dear friends” with the Schmidts through St. Rita High, an Augustinian-run school on the Southside where he substitute taught and would visit often as superior of the order’s Midwest province (1999-2001), and where Schmidt was an active board member.

Also, many of O’Reilly’s family members graduated from St. Rita’s. In one of her first positions with the Sox, O’Reilly said, she was in season ticket sales and sold Schmidt his first season passes.

Jim Keating, a diehard White Sox fan and lifelong Chicago Southside resident who lives a block and a half from the ball park can name a few of those close common connections to the pope too, especially during game one of the 2005 World Series.

He doesn’t personally know Pope Leo but “they had him on the big screen, apparently, right? You know, at some point, me and my wife were on the big screen, too, during the same game. It’s like, wild … you can’t make this stuff up.”

Keating pointed out his age, 70, which Pope Leo will be on Sept. 14. His daughter called him moments after the pope was elected and said her childhood friends started contacting her to tell her then-Bishop Prevost presided over their confirmations.

And Keating, a daily Massgoer who went to Catholic school from elementary through college added, “I’m retired, right? From law enforcement, but in the security job that I’ve had in the last couple years, we have done security details around his old house. It’s that crazy … because we’ve been working in Dolton, trying to protect some utility workers.”

The pope’s childhood home in the southeast suburb of Dolton is now in a city whose mainstay manufacturing industry died off, where crime has been common and Keating said robberies of utility workers happened regularly. Since his election, droves of visitors from the city and way beyond have been stopping at the house’s front yard to pray and take photos. And the city of Dolton bought the home in July with plans to turn it into a historical site.

In the years that included the White Sox last World Series win (2005), Pope Leo was prior general of the Augustinian order (2001-2013). Then in 2014, Pope Francis appointed him administrator then bishop of Chiclayo, Peru, where he had been a missionary in the ’80s and ’90s in the country’s mostly impoverished north and northeast. He then became cardinal in 2023.

On his regular visits home to Chicago, he would celebrate Masses (as recently as last summer) and as bishop preside over confirmations, ordinations and other prelates’ duties, catching the occasional game of his favorite baseball team.

For Richard King, another loyal White Sox fan from the Southside, the pope being a fan has been “fun.”

He said, “There are several people that have dressed like the pope at the White Sox game. So there’s all kinds of humor in this.” But he said personally, it has also had great significance for his family.

King told OSV News when the Archdiocese of Chicago first announced it would host a Mass in honor of Pope Leo’s election at Rate Field, his son urged him to go.

“And my son hadn’t been to church for a long time,” said King. “He asked me, ‘Are you going to that Mass for the pope?’ And I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ because nobody else was that I knew was going. He said, ‘Well, you should go.’ … I said, ‘You know what? If you go, I’ll go.'”

After a few days, King said his 41-year old son decided to go and he himself was elated that it happened to be Father’s Day weekend. Some friends gave him tickets “in a good spot because we were in the shade, so I didn’t have to sit out in the sun. Oh, it was perfect.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Participating in the ecumenical Season of Creation, Pope Leo XIV’s prayer intention for the month of September is “for our relationship with all of creation.”

In his monthly video, distributed Sept. 2 by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, Pope Leo prays to God: “Help us to discover your presence in all creation, so that, in fully recognizing it, we may feel and know ourselves to be responsible for this common home where you invite us to care for, respect and protect life in all its forms and possibilities.”

The Season of Creation, a time of Christian prayer and commitment to safeguarding the earth, runs from Sept. 1 through the Oct. 4 feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology.

After reciting the Angelus prayer Aug. 31, Pope Leo called on Catholics to join him in marking the Sept. 1 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

He told people gathered for the Angelus prayer that Pope Francis had established the day of prayer for Catholics, accepting an invitation Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople had made to all Christians. The Orthodox Church began the observance in 1989, including ecological responsibility in their Sept. 1 liturgical feast of creation, which ponders the mystery of God creating all things.

Marking the day of prayer “is more important and urgent than ever,” Pope Leo said, adding that the theme, “Seeds of Peace and Hope” will be contemplated throughout the Season of Creation.

In the spirit of the Canticle of Creation, which St. Francis of Assisi “composed 800 years ago, we praise God and renew our commitment not to ruin his gift but to care for our common home,” the pope had said after the Angelus.

In the video released by the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, Pope Leo recites his own prayer linking the 800th of the Canticle of Creation and the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” the network said.

Pope Leo prays in the video:

“Lord, you love everything you have created,
and nothing exists outside the mystery of your tenderness.
Every creature, no matter how small,
is the fruit of your love and has a place in this world.

“Even the simplest or shortest life is surrounded by your care.
Like St. Francis of Assisi, today we too want to say:
‘Praised be you, my Lord!'”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – True Christian charity respects the person being assisted and sets no conditions for receiving help, Pope Leo XIV said.

Charity involves both selfless giving and respect for human dignity of the other person, the pope said Sept. 1 as he met people involved in the Capuchin-sponsored Opera San Francesco for the Poor.

“We care for those we meet simply for their own good, so that they may grow to their full potential and follow their own path, without expecting anything in return and without imposing conditions,” the pope told the group from Milan.

That way of acting is precisely what “God does with each of us,” he said, “showing us the way, offering us all the help we need to follow it, but then leaving us free.”

The Opera San Francesco traces its foundation to Capuchin Brother Cecilio Maria Cortinovis, the doorkeeper at one of the order’s convents, who was looking for a better way to help all the people who knocked seeking material help.

He was soon joined by a local doctor, and today the group serves 30,000 people a year with its soup kitchens, clothing banks, shower facilities, clinics, psychological support and job counseling.

The group is “made up not of benefactors and beneficiaries, but of brothers and sisters who recognize each other as gifts from God, his presence, mutual help on a journey of holiness,” Pope Leo said.

In helping one another, he said, “we honor the body of Christ, wounded and at the same time in continual healing.”

Welcoming people as Brother Cortinovis did means “making space for the other in one’s own heart, in one’s own life, giving time, listening, support and prayer,” Pope Leo said.

It is the same attitude Pope Francis often encouraged: “looking in someone’s eyes, holding their hand, stooping to them.”

That attitude, he said, not only affirms the dignity of the other person, but it creates a “family atmosphere” that “helps us to overcome the loneliness of ‘I’ through the luminous communion of ‘we.’ How great a need there is to spread this sensibility in our society, where at times isolation is dramatic!”