Pope Leo XIV is the first American to become the 'Vicar of Christ', after Robert Prevost was elected by his fellow cardinals in the conclave in the Sistine Chapel on Thursday.
The 69-year-old was born and grew up in Chicago, with his parents Louis and Mildred and his brothers Louis and John. His father was born to Italian-French immigrants and his mother had a Dominican-Creole background. They lived in Dolton, in the far southern suburbs of the Windy City.
Dolton is 18 miles from Downtown Chicago... although it is still far from the edge of the sprawling 'Chicagoland' metropolitan area, which is home to nearly 10million people and covers more than 10,000 square miles.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, many Catholic families – including the Prevosts – moved out to Dolton from run-down tenements in the inner city during the post-Second World War building boom.
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They were members of the church at St Mary of the Assumption, where Pope Leo and his brothers went to school and served as altar boys. His father, who served in the US Navy in the war, was a teacher and his mother was a librarian at St Mary's, which also had a parish community centre, rectory and convent.
"She was one of the ladies that we called church ladies," said Marianne Angarola, 69, who graduated with the future Pope. "They went to Mass on a daily basis. They cleaned the altars, the church, the sacristy. She was involved in everything, including the fundraising activities. I don't ever remember seeing her wear pants."
Sadly, St Mary's of the Assumption is now closed and semi-derelict, with various Chicagoland real estate agencies advertising the vacant commercial property for sale. One states: "Cash offers only with proof of cash funds prior to viewing. Religious Facility including a Church, Parish Center/School, Former Convent, Rectory, totaling 71,646 square feet located on the far South Side of Chicago."
According to the Sun-Times, this isn't the only Catholic institution in the area to have closed as the children and grandchildren of the original residents, many of them migrants from southern Europe, have moved on to pastures new.
It also includes Mendel College Prep High School, where both Pope Leo and his mother worked, and Mount Carmel Elementary School in Chicago Heights, where his father was principal.
Mildred Prevost also worked in the library at Holy Name Cathedral in central Chicago, which famously still bears the bullet holes from the 1926 murder of Polish-American mob boss 'Hymie' Weiss. He was said to be the only man that Al Capone ever feared.
Nobody was ever convicted of the killing, although the ambush is said to have been organised by Capone's bodyguard Frank Nitti and carried out by 'Machine Gun' Jack McGurn and Sam 'Golf Bag' Hunt, who carried a shotgun in a trademark golf bag.
Weiss is buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery in Chicago, as is Capone (who attended St Columbanus Church near his home in Chicago's South Side, and whose mother, Therese, donated a statue of Christ on the Cross to the city's Santa Maria Incoronata Church).
By the time Pope Leo was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, the gangsters of the Prohibition era were a distant memory. At St Mary's the pupils went to mass every morning and it was said in Latin.
Angarola told the Sun-Times: "Robert Prevost never complained. We used to pray with our hands, you know, our fingers pointing to heaven, and, after a while, you get tired of doing that, and you just want to fold them over. Robert Prevost never folded his hands over. He was just godly. Not in an in-your-face way. It was part of his aura, like he was hand-selected, and he embraced it. And he wasn’t weird. He was nice."
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