The priest, Father James Ray, had been barred since 1991 from performing parish work or being alone with minors – restrictions the Archdiocese of Chicago noted when it asked Prevost to allow Ray to live at the friary, the complaint said. “The school ...

After a series of closures by the Chicago Archdiocese, Christ Our Savior Church in South Holland has bragging rights as Pope Leo XIV’s childhood parish.

Though he spent much of his life abroad, the new Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Francis Prevost, hails from the Chicago area, where he grew up in a suburb just south of the city and attended a Catholic church and school on Chicago’s South Side.

"The Pope is from Chicago. This is one of the biggest moments in the modern history of our city," said Mayor Brandon Johnson in a statement.

Cardinal Robert Prevost, a Chicago-area native and former substitute teacher at St. Rita High School, has become the first American pope in the 2,000-year history of the Catholic Church.

Chicago’s South Side was solidly working class during Pope Leo’s childhood, said Rob Paral, a researcher at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago. The family attended a South Side church, but they lived in Dolton, a suburb just past the city line.

Catholic Charities uses Cozen O'Connor for state government lobbying. So does Rush University Medical Center, which performs abortions, and CVS Health, whose pharmacies dispense prescriptions that end pregnancies.

At St. Mary of the Assumption school in Chicago’s southern suburbs, Robert Prevost was quiet, kind and studious. Mostly, he wanted to be a priest. It was the 1960s, and the parish school was a hub for Catholic families in the working-class neighborhood.