CHICAGO (OSV News) — Under a bright sun, around an altar set up at centerfield, more than a dozen priests and bishops led by Chicago Cardinal Blase J. Cupich concelebrated a special Mass for the election of a first-ever Chicago-born pope. Trinity Sunday’s vigil Mass June 14 was at Rate Field, the home park of the Chicago White Sox, Pope Leo XIV’s favorite baseball team.
Concelebrants included the Archdiocese of Chicago’s auxiliary bishops as well as bishops from surrounding dioceses, several Augustinian priests, the incoming president of Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union and other clergy. The liturgy included multilingual readings and prayers of the faithful, with the psalm sung in Spanish and English.
From the ambo, Cardinal Cupich looked around the stadium nearly filled with tens of thousands of people.
“Wow. I think I will remember this moment as ‘the sermon on the mound,'” he said in a tongue-in-cheek reference to Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount recounted in Matthew 5-7.
Cardinal Cupich then preached a homily on people’s inherent dignity, inviting the faithful to “live authentically” and taking a forceful stand against the country’s immigration policy.
The cardinal reminded those present and watching via livestream that their worth comes from the fact that they are loved by God, that they are called to a life of self-giving service, and that life is to be lived not in isolation but through an interconnectedness with others, mirroring the relationship between the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
Emphasizing connection
In emphasizing people’s interconnection, he said, “Humanity is greatly diminished whenever the unborn or the undocumented, the unemployed, the unhealthy, are excluded, uninvited, and unwelcome or whenever we tell ourselves that they are of no concern to us.” The comment received widespread applause.
While acknowledging nations’ duties to secure their borders, protect the public “and enact reasonable rules for immigration,” Cardinal Cupich said, “it is wrong to scapegoat those who are here without documents. For indeed, they are here due to a broken immigration system” to sustained clapping.
“Both parties have failed to fix” that system, he admonished.
“(The undocumented) are here, not by invasion, but by invitation,” he said as the applause and cheers became louder.
“(It’s) an invitation to harvest the fruits of the earth and feed our families, an invitation to clean our tables, homes and hotel rooms, an invitation to landscape our lawns, and yes, even an invitation to care for our children and our elderly. I have no doubt that if we are honest about our connections to one another, we can respond to this moment and thus reclaim our calling to live as authentic persons in the image of the divine persons,” he said.
Pope Leo XIV, a dual citizen of both the United States and Peru, spent nearly 20 years on mission in Peru, where he taught seminarians and practiced canon law, and later led the Diocese of Chiclayo along the country’s impoverished northwestern coast.
‘God can work in our lives’
The Mass was preceded by a video message from Pope Leo XIV addressed mainly to young people, instructing them to look deep within their hearts and recognize that God is calling them to a relationship with his son Jesus Christ, and to be the “light of hope to the world.”
In the video, the pope referred to one of St. Augustine’s famous phrases, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O God,'” and, he added, “that restlessness is not a bad thing.”
“We shouldn’t look for ways to put out the fire, to eliminate or even numb ourselves to the tensions that we feel, the difficulties that we experience. We should rather get in touch with our own hearts and recognize that God can work in our lives, through our lives, and through us, reach out to other people,” Pope Leo said.
The pope stressed that God’s love is a source of hope and strength, which is a message young people can proliferate, he said.
Among the attendees was Matthew Agoncillo, a student at the University of Illinois in Chicago who volunteered with its Newman Center during the distribution of the Eucharist at the Mass. He said he felt challenged by Pope Leo’s message.
“I think it’s sometimes hard to conceptualize what that means,” Agoncillo, 20, told OSV News. “For me, being a light is just spreading the faith through an abundance of love through yourself and spreading that to other people, which will hopefully send more light to other people, and the whole world can be on fire with a bunch of joy. So I think it’s important to share your light with other people.”
Resonating with young people
Ian Moran, a recent University of Illinois in Chicago graduate, told OSV News that he enjoyed how the pope encouraged young people to dive deep in their faith.
“I know for me, growing up, I didn’t really hear that that often,” the 23-year-old said. “Hearing that from the pope and him … actually encouraging us as young people, like, ‘Make this your own, Jesus loves you’ — he wants you to take on the faith as your own, I thought that was very good.”
The pre-Mass program started with the national anthem of Peru sung by Luis Galvez, a native Peruvian and music director at a suburban Chicago parish. That was followed by the U.S. national anthem, sung by the choir of Leo High School, a Chicago Catholic boys school that is a contender in this season’s America’s Got Talent.
Prior to the Mass, Pope Leo’s longtime friend and high school classmate, Augustinian Father John Merkelis, talked about the pope’s humble, “regular guy” character. His former professor at Catholic Theological Union, Sister Dianne Bergant, a member of the Sisters St. Agnes of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, said she kept all her records from 45 years of teaching and he was a good student.
In the minutes before the program began, Cardinal Cupich brought to the stage a group of first through fourth grade students from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy on Chicago’s Northside, who were dressed as cardinals, with one in papal attire. The students had held a mock conclave, complete with billowing white smoke, which drew international attention when they elected their own pretend pope May 6, a day before the real conclave started. The newly-elected mock pope took the name Augustine.
The June 14 celebration hosted by the Chicago White Sox was organized by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Chicago Catholic, the archdiocese’s news outlet, reported that, days after the conclave, Cardinal Cupich was dining with donors who happened to know the owner of the White Sox, Jerry Reinsdorf, when the cardinal’s staff brought up the idea for a celebration and Mass. The donors reportedly talked to Reinsdorf, which set plans for the event in motion.
Jennifer Esposito of Oak Park, a suburb west of Chicago, said she was happy to attend the June 14 event in honor of Chicago’s native son.
“It’s still settling in that we have an American pope, let alone a pope from Chicago who sat in this stadium,” she told OSV News. “I mean, it’s just crazy, but I’m so glad I did (attend). That was one of the most beautiful experiences, just to have all these people together and just the way they celebrated all the different cultures, I thought was fantastic. And I loved his (the pope’s) message. I hope it resonates with young people, and I hope he’s going to be a good beacon for our church.”
