John Melone, a parishioner at St. Veronica’s in Flossmoor, stopped at Holy Name Cathedral Sunday morning as part of an annual family tradition of spending time together downtown Chicago for the holidays.
Walking through the main doors, Melone and his family passed a cardboard cutout of Pope Leo XIV. It was days after the Chicago-born pontiff made his first Christmas message during one of the holiest times of year for Catholics.
After morning Mass, the Flossmoor resident told the Sun-Times he is “cautiously optimistic” but said it was too early to judge the pontiff’s tenure. He was one of many Chicagoans reflecting on Leo’s tenure over the holidays.
“It’s a lifetime appointment, so it takes some time to get settled,” Melone said. “A lot of his early events were things that were already scheduled for Francis. It’ll be interesting to see what he chooses to do once he has a little more control. … He’s already helped the Bears, and we’re hoping he’ll do the same for the Sox.”
During his Christmas message Thursday, Leo urged the faithful to shed indifference in the face of those who have lost everything.
The pope remembered Palestinians in Gaza, “exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold,” and talked about the fragility of “defenseless populations, tried by so many wars’’ and of “young people forced to take up arms … and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.’’
He also prayed for migrants in the Mediterranean and Americas, as well as the Yemeni people.
“In becoming man, Jesus took upon himself our fragility, identifying with each one of us: with those who have nothing left and have lost everything,” Leo said.
Melone said he appreciated the way the previous pontiff, Pope Francis, ministered to the people, specifically speaking on social justice issues, and he hopes Leo will try to make his mark on Catholics by pushing them to bring good into the world through the actions they take to prove their faith.
“A lot of Catholics are looking for a pope who will push them towards being better Catholics, and then social justice comes as a product of that,” he said. “Francis might’ve been more oriented toward the actions, and I think some of us are looking for a clergy that’ll push us toward a personal holiness that will lead to those actions.”
Estelle Martin, also at Sunday morning’s Mass, said the pope is a “big part” of her life, and she hoped more people would get in tune with religion as she has.
Martin — who attended Thornton Township High School, near where the Pope was raised — said she wanted to see the church do more for the impoverished.
“What he’s done so far has been very positive,” Martin said. “And it’s our obligation to support him. … These are very hard times. He’s needed and welcomed.”
Sharon Long, a 30-year parishioner at Holy Name Cathedral, said she saw a lot of Francis in his successor. She, too, wants to see more people brought into the faith.
Leo has previously criticized the spread of “the homosexual lifestyle” and didn’t sit with trans women at a lunch tradition begun two years ago under Francis but said he would appoint women to leadership roles, though not as deacons.
“God accepts all people for who they are, and I hope the pope follows on that path and accepts everyone into the Catholic faith,” Long said.
