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.

The white smoke that billowed from the Sistine Chapel on Thursday signalled the selection of a new pope — the first from America. Thousands of miles away in Illinois, a sense of ecstasy greeted the man previously known as Robert Prevost,

It's the first day on the job for the new leader of the Catholic Church! Cardinals elected Chicago native Robert Francis Prevost as the new pope.