When Pope Leo XIV was selected in May as the next leader of the Catholic Church, his hometown, Chicago, erupted in shocked delight. There were joyful newspaper headlines (“DA POPE!”), impromptu gatherings at parishes across the city, and a “Pope-A-Roni” pie marketed by a local pizza joint.
On Saturday afternoon, the city had a chance to formally celebrate together for the first time. The occasion was a festive program and Mass organized by the Archdiocese of Chicago and hosted by Rate Field, the home of the White Sox.
The program on Saturday included music, prayer, and Pope Leo’s first public address to an American audience, in the form of an almost eight-minute video recorded at the Vatican.
The message was addressed to young people gathered in Chicago and watching online. The pope acknowledged their difficulties living through the isolation of the pandemic, and of anxiety, loneliness and depression.
Longing, tension and restlessness are not to be ignored or numbed, he advised. Rather, he said, “I’d like to take this opportunity to invite each one of you to look into your own hearts, to recognize that God is present, and that perhaps in many different ways, God is reaching out to you.”
More than 30,000 tickets to the event sold out within days of the announcement last month, organizers said. Some tickets quickly appeared on secondary markets for more than $1,200, according to The Chicago Sun-Times. (The White Sox, who are in last place, average fewer than 17,000 fans a game.)
June 14 was chosen because it was the first Saturday that the ballpark was available with no major competing events in the city. An earlier date for the Mass was rejected because it conflicted with a Crosstown Classic baseball game and a Beyoncé concert.
But the event arrived at an extraordinary moment for the country. Military vehicles were on the streets of Washington for a lavish parade ordered by President Trump, while National Guard troops have been deployed to Los Angeles. Protests under the slogan “No Kings” were underway throughout the country. In Chicago, thousands of people are expected at Daley Plaza, four miles north of the ballpark.
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich said in an interview on Friday that the date was not chosen as a provocation to President Trump, whose policies he has criticized. (President Trump’s birthday is also Saturday.) But in his homily at the ballpark, Cardinal Cupich addressed the rights of immigrants directly, emphasizing the spiritual and practical connections between undocumented immigrants and the rest of the country.
“They are here due to a broken immigration system which both parties have failed to fix,” he said to cheers from many in the stands. “They are here not by invasion but invitation: to harvest the fruits of the earth that feed our families, an invitation to clean our tables, homes and hotel rooms, an invitation to landscape our lawns, and yes even an invitation to care for our children and elderly.”
Noting that it was the day before Trinity Sunday, a celebration of the Christian doctrine of the three persons of God, he said that the value of human life is defined by the fact of being loved by God. Christians have an obligation, he said, to reject “language or activity that demonizes and degrades the dignity of others, that pretends that some persons are unworthy to be connected to us.”
Other participants included a representative of the White Sox, and the choir from Leo High School on the South Side, an all-boys Catholic school that appeared this week on “America’s Got Talent.”
After the program and a time of prayer, the event transitioned into a formal Mass, led by Cardinal Cupich and a leader of the Augustinian order, to which Pope Leo belongs. The archdiocese is the country’s third largest, serving about two million Catholics.
Volunteers included greeters, a 200-person choir and nearly 500 lay ministers and ushers to assist in the distribution of Communion throughout the ballpark.
“This city as a whole is in love with our new pope because he is of us,” said Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, a network of labor unions that worked to distribute thousands of tickets to union members. Leo’s selection has been particularly electrifying to the labor movement, Mr. Reiter said, because he chose a name echoing Leo XIII, the turn-of-the-century pontiff sometimes called the Pope of Labor.
Pope Leo grew up in the south suburb of Dolton, Ill., just outside the city limits, and has been described by those who know him as a dedicated Sox fan. He was captured by television cameras in the stands of the ballpark watching Game 1 of the World Series in 2005. This week, he was photographed sporting the team’s black-and-white cap with his white papal cassock at a general audience at the Vatican.
The ballpark itself has undergone more name changes than Pope Leo, formerly Robert Prevost. Known as Comiskey Park until 2003, it was U.S. Cellular Field, then Guaranteed Rate Field, and then last year became simply Rate Field. In interviews about the event this week, many longtime Chicagoans referred to it as “Comiskey.” In his remarks, Leo welcomed the crowd to “White Sox Park.”
The archdiocese has emphasized that all are welcome at the celebration. That includes Catholics, non-Catholics and even Cubs fans.
“It’s very apropos that Cub fans have to come to Comiskey to get some religion,” Mr. Reiter said.
Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times.
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