In 2005, when the Chicago White Sox made their first successful World Series run since 1917, The New York Times ran a Sunday piece headlined “In White Sox Nation, the Borders Are Secure.” I have read few things that comprehended so well “this strange, severed city” where Robert Francis Prevost, like me, was born into White Sox fandom.

The White Sox have (despite early and maliciously false reports that he cheers for the Cubs) embraced their most infallible fan warmly since Pope Leo XIV was elected on May 8, 2025. There is plenty of official and unofficial merch; one cannot approach the ballpark without confronting the incredible papal product line. There is also a mural on the concourse at Section 140 where Fr. Bob sat during the 2005 World Series. But at a game against the Cincinnati Reds this past Tuesday, the Sox went all-in with a pontiff promotion, giving every fan who entered the park an “official” White Sox mitre. Does everyone even know what a mitre is? No matter. The giveaway drew a sellout crowd of 38,113. Of course it did.

The close-knit neighborhoods in this part of the world are defined by their Catholic high schools and parishes. It doesn’t really matter if you’re Catholic—many at the ballpark were not. Everybody is included. The only thing that equals Catholicism’s grip on the local imagination is the White Sox. Little surprise, then, we gathered at the great shrine to celebrate one of our own with the rituals we all know.

Any doubts on that point were settled between the fifth and sixth innings when a south-side pastor, Fr. Tom Hurley (whom I would guess half of the people in the ballpark knew or had met), was interviewed on the Jumbotron. He said it would probably make Pope Leo very happy if everyone in the ballpark were to offer one another a sign of peace, which he invited us to do. And so, there in the stands, that’s what we did, just like it was a Sunday Mass. Except in my free hand I held a beer.

Here on the south side, the practice of Catholicism is just life. It’s nothing like the joyless, turgid traditionalism that wears a mask of seriousness over a sourpuss. It is family, neighborhood, parish, and community, a complex of overlapping relationships that shaped young Robert Prevost’s earliest, most formative years. Pope Leo knows what I mean.

More than the mitres, that’s what gathered us at the park. Like all close communities, this is an insular place—maybe even parochial.  It’s tough trying to belong here if you’re not from here. But it’s also grandmas and grandkids, aunts and uncles and cousins and neighbors all together cheering for their team, greeting each other and running into old friends while we celebrated the south-side pope. I overheard a member of the White Sox staff say, “The great thing about the south side is that everybody knows everybody.” And that’s pretty much true.

The Sox lost the papal game to the Reds in a heartbreaking tenth inning. South-siders also know what losing feels like. It’s part of our local identity. It’s what that New York Times piece meant about “this strange, severed city.” To be a White Sox fan is to accept second-class status in the Second City. South-siders understand this. We’re fine with it. Sox fans outnumber Cub fans in Chicago, but the Cubs run this town for some reason. Let them.

We have the pope. We’ll share him with you. But he’s one of us.

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