At Chicago baseball stadium, Pope Leo makes his first pitch to America

CHICAGO – Thousands of Chicagoans – mostly Catholics – filled the seats of the White Sox’s stadium Saturday for a reverential three-hour tribute to Pope Leo, including a video message from the new pope calling on people to pay attention to longings for a “true meaning” and to find it in God, service and community.

Priests, bishops and nuns lined the emerald infield of the stadium as Leo’s message, his first address to an U.S. audience, played on large-scale screens in the outfield.

The historic election of the first American pope – especially a hometown boy – to some was badly needed cheer and joy at a time when, they said, global turmoil fills the news.

“The timing (of Leo becoming pope) is divine, with all that’s going on in the world. It’s a nice, positive thing in what’s really a tumultuous time in the United States,” said Hannah Barger, 27, a physicians’ assistant student – and non-Catholic – who lives in Chicago and attended with a childhood friend who just became Catholic. Barger showed up without tickets but was able to find someone who had extras.

The event, organized by the Chicago Archdiocese, was billed as a celebration of Leo and his hometown, and included a performance by a local Catholic schoolboys choir currently on “America’s Got Talent.” Chicago Bulls announcer Chuck Swirsky served as emcee.

In his 7½-minute message, Leo said he wanted to reach young people, noting that they had lived through the pandemic and “times of isolation, of great difficulty, sometimes even difficulties in your families,” and in the world today.

“Young people,” he said, “you are the promise of hope for so many of us.”

Pay attention to a desire to search for meaning and consider that the answer may lay in a combination of God, community and service, he said.

“How important it is for each one of us to pay attention to the presence of God in our own hearts, to that longing for love in our lives, for searching – a true searching, for finding the ways we may be able to do something with our own lives to serve others,” Leo said. “And in that service to others we may find that coming together in friendship, building up community, we too can find true meaning in our lives.”

More than 30,000 tickets were claimed for the event held under a cloudless blue sky. For hours they listened quietly as people took the stage – some appearing on large screens – to talk about Leo, known as Bob to friends in Chicago. Bob the graduate student. Bob the fellow seminarian. Bob the White Sox fan.

In a place used to the sounds of wild cheers and Latin American walk-up tunes for baseball players, praise hymns floated through the stadium.

As in a typical Sunday service, people fanned themselves with programs and followed along with the praise lyrics on screen.

And instead of hot dog vendors and beer hawkers, volunteers with local Catholic organizations emerged from the tunnels with silver bowls, ready to serve Communion to the masses.

Among them were the Reyes family, siblings and cousins whose parents had emigrated from a small town in Mexico 60 years ago where everyone watched one baseball team: the White Sox.

The churchgoing family had prime parking spots Saturday in front of the stadium where they planned to tailgate for hours.

Having a pope not only from the United States, but from the South Side of Chicago, where they lived, they said, was a powerful and even disorienting experience.

“It’s hard to grasp,” said Yoli Reyes, 51, speaking of the Catholic leader formerly known as Robert Francis Prevost. “It’s almost hard to take him seriously. It’s like ‘It’s Bob, it’s Bob,’ ” she said.

But that familiarity is making Leo seem even more accessible than his already-accessible predecessor, Pope Francis, the family said. And they hope that will make him, and the Catholic Church, more attractive to young people and anyone who hears his message – inclusion and and at peace with other faiths.

“We should all get along, and he seems even more accepting to other religions – and is showing us that there is too much strife,” said Maria Rosales, Reyes’ sister.

The location of the event definitively makes clear after some post-conclave social media debate that the pope favors the White Sox over the crosstown rival Cubs.

It’s also the start of a groundbreaking papacy. Leo is a dual American-Peruvian citizen who has lived in Rome for more than a dozen years and is fluent in five languages.

His only official action as pope concerning the United States, so far, was naming a new bishop to San Diego last month. In a letter this week, Bishop Designate Michael Pham, a Vietnamese refugee, invited priests and faith leaders to “stand in solidarity” with migrants making court appearances.

The event comes the same day as President Donald Trump’s military parade, the largest in D.C. since the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, and an organized day of protests in over 2,000 cities dubbed “No Kings Nationwide Day of Defiance.”

“He is a kind of a vessel we’re all pouring our hopes and expectations into until this papacy takes shape,” said Steven Millies, a professor of public theology at Catholic Theological Union, a Chicago school where Leo studied divinity. Millies was a member of the archdiocese’s committee that planned the Leo celebration.

Organizers said they hoped to accomplish three goals: offer ecstatic Chicagoans a chance to celebrate, introduce multiple aspects of Leo’s Chicago life and offer a modern event of meaning.

Kathleen Sprows Cumming, a University of Notre Dame historian, said Leo probably will be cautious as he juggles not sounding too American in a global church where the U.S. is considered by many disproportionately wealthy and powerful.

Some people are likely to contrast the military parade with the celebration of the pope in Chicago, Cumming said.

“I think of course people will see it as a contrast, even if it wasn’t deliberately staged that way,” she said. “These are two very different embodiments of America. … Two very different expressions of America.”

A month into his tenure, Leo has been cautious in his comments about politics and government policy at an explosive time in the U.S. and other countries, several experts on the papacy said.

Leo was known during his decades in Peru as a powerful advocate for migrants and has spoken multiple times since becoming pope about the dignity of those who emigrate in search of safety or a better life.. Since becoming pope, he has not specifically called out world leaders on their handling of the issue.

In Sunday’s brief homily in Rome, Leo spoke 11 times against “borders” – of the heart, between people and between nations. He called for God to “open borders, break down walls, dispel hatred.”

Shaka Rawls handed bottles of water to members of the Leo High School choir as they exited the stage after their performance. The school – one of just two African American all-boys Catholic high schools in the country – had been “thrust into the spotlight” thanks to their shared name with the new pope, said Rawls, the school’s principal.

“They feel included and seen,” Rawls said, feelings that he acknowledged are hard to come by for some of his students. “It’s, quite honestly, isolating being a Black Catholic in Chicago.”

The connection to the pope – a fellow South Sider – has made the world feel smaller and closer for students, Shaka said.

“It’s empowering to them,” he said. “They are evangelists not just for their school, but for their faith. They now feel important.”