DOLTON, Ill. — The newest Roman Catholic shrine in America has three bedrooms, two baths, a finished basement and used to be the home of newly elected Pope Leo XIV.
A day after the Vatican shocked the world by electing Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal who spent most of his career in Peru, to be the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church, pilgrims have started trickling to the brick bungalow on East 141st Place in suburban Dolton to see where he grew up.
Bob and Susan Castagna drove over from St. John, Indiana, to see the pope's old home.
“I grew up in a house like this,” Bob Castagna, 77, a lawyer who has worked for the church and is originally from New York, said as he looked at the bungalow. “This fills my heart with joy.”
“It's a magnet,” said Susan Castagna, 76, who said she grew up in Oregon. “We just want to come someplace that is close to the person who is so close to Jesus, so close to God.”
Marilyn Awong, who lives in Dolton, also described the house as a “magnet” and said the current owner even allowed her to look inside. She said he confided that his wife was pregnant and carrying a boy. She said she suggested he consider naming him Leo.
“It’s really awesome to know this house is in Dolton,” Awong said. “It’s really positive for the village.”
Donna Sagna, who lives next to the home, set up a speaker with solemn Italian prayer music to welcome pilgrims into a place that has newly become sacred for Catholics around the world.
"My idea is to support the people that come in the community to connect with God in some kind of way," Sagna said. She credits the power of her prayers for why "I was pulled into being close to the pope."
Sagna and Awong said that for a community fighting to overcome high crimes rates and recover from a political scandal involving local officials, having this connection to the pope brings them hope.
"It used to be violent over here, even in the pope's house. But we prayed and we prayed and you know, it's better now. It's better now," said Sagna, who also put a cross outside the pope's house with the faces of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Michael Brown and five other Black people whose killings rocked the nation and sparked national debates over police brutality and racial injustice.
"I'm honored that I'm able to be a testament. I can tell everybody about my prayer life and how great God is," Sagna added.
'Just mind-blowing'
Watching all the unfolding devotion was Louis Prevost, one of Leo’s older brothers, who told NBC News on Thursday that he was still “almost speechless.”
“It’s just mind-blowing that my brother was elected pope,” he said. “We’ve kind of always known he was special. We used to tease him about being pope when he was 6 years old.”
John Prevost, the pope's other older brother, said he jokingly told his kid brother to watch the movie “Conclave” so he would know how to behave.
“I wanted to take his mind off of it, laugh about something, because this is now an awesome responsibility,” he said.
Back in the '60s, the future pope and his family attended St. Mary of the Assumption Parish on 137th Street, which was then a busy church and school that straddled the Chicago-Dolton border.
Now it's a collection of abandoned buildings — physical reminders of the challenges Leo faces to revive a church that has been hit hard by the sexual abuse scandals and has been losing active worshippers for decades in the U.S.
Leo was born on the South Side of Chicago and the Windy City media was quick to celebrate their 69-year-old native son, and do so in Chicagoese.
“DA POPE” blared the headline of the Chicago Sun-Times, the tabloid of record in this sprawling city of nearly 2.7 million people on Lake Michigan.
Meanwhile, famed Chicago street food purveyor Portillo's introduced a new Italian beef sandwich to honor the new pope. Dubbed The Leo, it features “the holy trinity of peppers—sweet, hot, or a combo.”
Over at Holy Name Cathedral, the seat of the Archdiocese of Chicago, some 200 worshippers packed the pews at the 8 a.m. Mass, far more than usual for an early Friday morning.
“Thanks for the gift of new Pope Leo XIV,” Bishop Lawrence Sullivan said after handing out Communion to dozens of attendees.
And as the music from the organ filled the sanctuary, Sister Maryjane Okolie, who is based on the South Side, was beaming with pride.
“God has chosen the right person,” Okolie said.
But Okolie said she did not expect the cardinals to chose a Southsider.
“I was shocked,” the sister said. “And then hearing he is from Chicago, South Side, oh, my goodness. God is great!”
Chicago is home to a large Latino community, including Peruvian Americans, and they too were rejoicing to have somebody in the Vatican who is very familiar with their region and culture.
Leo's mother, Mildred Martinez Prevost, was of Spanish heritage, and the new pontiff spent two decades in Peru, where he was the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo and later the bishop of Chiclayo, even becoming a naturalized citizen of the South American country.
“As a Latin American living here in Chicago, I feel so proud that the pope is from Chicago and that he has dedicated a large part of his life serving the Latin American community,” one woman told Telemundo.
“Being from Chicago and also Latin American, he knows about the suffering of the people. It makes me happy that we have things in common,” one man said.
Another Peruvian man told Telemundo that the pope spent “about 10 years in the city where I’m from, Chiclayo in Peru.”
“I have family who received their confirmation from him,” he said, referring to the Catholic sacrament.
In Rome, Cardinal Blase Cupich, head of the Chicago Archdiocese, told NBC News' Lester Holt that they did indeed pick the right man for the job.
“Well, he’s an individual who is just very real,” Cupich said. “What you see is what you get. He’s authentic. He cares about people. He wants to do the right thing. He’s not afraid to take a decision, and it’s been said he doesn’t pick a fight, but he won’t run from it either.”
It wasn't just Chicagoans putting claims on Leo. The president of Villanova University in Pennsylvania, from which the pontiff graduated in 1977 with a math degree, said he emailed Leo not long after he was unveiled as the new pope.
“I wrote to him yesterday congratulating him, and I jokingly said to him, ‘Maybe I can get you for next year’s commencement speaker,’” the Rev. Peter Donohue told MSNBC's Ana Cabrera on Friday. “And he wrote back and he said, ‘Thanks, Peter. I appreciate it but I’m probably going to be busy.’”
Nicole Acevedo reported from Chicago, and Daniella Silva and Corky Siemaszko reported from New York.
