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.”
