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.

In a place where civic pride is a way of life, Chicagoans need little help believing the election of Pope Leo shows their city is among God’s favorites.

Sisters Isabel Fitzgerald, 11, Vivian Fitzgerald, 8, and Lucia Fitzgerald, 5, from Chicago, stand inside St. Mary of the Assumption Parish, where Pope Leo XIV, Robert Prevost of the United States, used to attend while growing up,