An open letter to Pope Leo XIV

Open Letter to Pope Leo XIV
June, 2025

Your Holiness,

It is too good to be true, and yet it’s true. This could be the catchline for your whole papacy so far.

Consider this: You could have been elected in the middle of the American night, but instead you were elected in the middle of the American school day. A++ to the Holy Spirit. I cannot tell you how much more amazing this made the whole thing – my Sisters teach in all corners of the United States and we have been sharing stories. Children ran through halls with balloons in Texas. They made posters in Phoenix and nearly caused someone to pull a fire alarm (turns out yelling “SMOKE!” is a bit dangerous in this way). The second graders of Sacramento started chanting “U-S-A!” the moment they learned you were an American. And so on and so on. I’m so grateful that instead of being deprived of all of this awesomeness, the American Church was awake, together, and huddled around live feeds.

Holy Father, you don’t know me, but I feel as if I did know you. This is what your life is like now – that phrase times around 1.4 billion. Welcome to life in the Chair of St. Peter where you suddenly belong to all the world.

But there is no denying that you belong to America in a particular way. I know, I know – you spent a long time in Peru and in Rome and so on, but none of that hides the fact that you sound like a Chicagoan when you speak English. That nasal twang means something to the Church here in America, and even more so to the Church in Chicagoland.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve been wanting to write since you were elected but have been having trouble working out what to say. This letter is my poor attempt to incarnate my joy at your election.

To return to the Church of the live feeds, I watched mine from my office at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston. It was exam week and quite a little gaggle gathered in my office (some of them skipping part of their exam) to wait for you to appear. Having realized almost in the first moment of hearing your name that you were “that one guy from Chicago” I knew in the next moment that I have an apology to make.

Sister Jakupcak in her office with her students watching Pope Leo

An apology to the Entire Nation of Poland.

Listen, I love JPII. I’m a JPII vocation, if you will – saw him in St. Louis in 1999 and then at World Youth Day in both Rome and Toronto. I have even been to his hometown and eaten the Pope Cake that every shop there sells. Still, I have to confess that I honestly always thought the Poles were a little overblown about JPII’s Polishness. I mean, I get it: first non-Italian Pope in centuries is a big deal – it was pretty much straight out of Shoes of the Fishermen in one of those uncanny life-imitating-art moments. Super cool stuff. But even given my knowledge of all these things I was a little bit done with the pride emanating from everyone even remotely Polish.

Now I know better.

Honestly Holy Father, if you had told me before the conclave that a Boomer Priest Father Bob was going to be elected Pope I would have been extraordinarily displeased. There is, as I am sure you are aware, an ethos that goes with Father Bobs of a certain age, mostly one that radiates beige and is set to OCP jazz chords. And insult to injury, Chicago. Chicago! As someone from downstate I tend to find all Chicagoans mildly offensive. They sully the reputation of an otherwise quite lovely Illinois.

And yet, there you were on the loggia and I knew you as a Chicagoan Boomer Priest Father Bob and I loved you. Instantly. I was overtaken, in fact, by a white-hot surge of patriotism that decidedly included a specific pride for Northeast Illinois. You waved like an American and my heart was lost forever.

So, Poland, my apologies. The JPII thing was entirely justified.

After your Urbi et Orbi my office had cleaned out and two different students of mine bounced in absolutely overflowing with excitement and wanting to know my opinion of you. I shouldn’t have been able to have an opinion – you had been Pope for all of 30 minutes. But I realized that I, too, was born in Chicago. And most of us born in Chicago are not from Chicago, though all of us say “Chicago” when asked where we are from, even people as far downstate as Ottawa, because no one knows literally anything else about Illinois.

By then I had discovered that you are from Dolton – my father, in fact, sent me a picture of your childhood home there almost immediately. I was skeptical that this could be it, but I should have trusted the power of the Internet, I guess, because it totally was. Personally I thought the ultra-modern renovation pictured in the house listing was a shame, and since the pictures have been removed from Zillow I’m guessing others must have thought so, too.

Anyway, Dolton is one parish over from where my parents were married at St. Stan’s in Posen. (“Mom did you go to high school with the Pope’s brothers?” “Are you kidding? It was the baby boom – Blue Island could barely handle its own population let alone Dolton’s!”).

So, you see, I had an opinion of you 30 minutes after you were elected. It was this:

“The Pope,” I said to my students first and then to myself many times in the following days, “has probably been to White Castle.”

Of all the South Side things I could fix on I’m not sure why it should be that one, other than that White Castle figures large in the lore of my own family. (Eating twenty 5 cent sliders at a time was how my great-uncle survived the Depression.) White Castle isn’t even that regional – Aurelio’s pizza is more obviously iconic but my mom never talked about it and, not really growing up there myself, I didn’t think of it – though it is hilarious that they trademarked the phrase “Pope-A-Roni” on the day after you were elected. Amazing.

As I spoke to my students and settled into your Chicago-nes, I was suddenly seized with fear that you might be a Cubs fan. I talked myself into believing that odds were good that someone from Dolton would love the Sox (Sorry Bostonians, but when we say the Sox we mean the White Sox), and when your brother confirmed it I was profoundly relieved.

A quick story. When I was in first grade, one day there was a parade of fifth graders through our classroom, all of whom had colored Cubs logos and were wearing them, save one peculiarly obnoxious orange-and-black clad Giants fan at the end of the line. As they finished their parade, Mrs. Goode, my teacher, asked if we knew why they had come. We did not. She said, in what I took to be a very serious and mystical manner, twinged with a slight Southern drawl I can still hear, “The Cubs are playing the Giants tonight.”

I’ve looked it up and this must have been a playoff series in 1989. It seemed important, though I am not at all positive I even knew we were talking about baseball. But later that day, standing in the sun on my Uncle Mike’s porch with my Dad, I repeated the sonorous phrase as something I thought both men could explain to me. My Uncle more or less took me by the shoulders and said, “You listen to me. We don’t care who the Cubs are playing because we are White Sox people in this family.”

Thus, though I don’t particularly follow baseball, it was rather desperately important to me that you be a Sox fan. Sox fans are my people, you understand. I accordingly applaud your good taste and was amused to find in my father’s closet, on a recent visit home, a pullover that looks like you should be wearing it at that 2005 World Series game – the picture of which, of course, was discovered mere hours after you were elected. Because the Internet.

Speaking of which, you know that they made a mural of you in Rate Park? (Spelled thus, pronounced “Comiskey” – calling it White Sox Park in your recent video message was very diplomatic!) Did you know the mural has become a place of pilgrimage? The Chicago Tribune did a story about it, and, though I don’t often send people to the Trib, you should read it. In addition to explaining how people seek out the seat you occupied at the Series and have their picture taken with the mural, it also included a picture of fans decked out in miters and red chasubles in a bid to look like you. I am not making this up. I didn’t even know a layman could buy a miter.

And on the subject of headgear, when MLB tweeted a picture of you in a Sox cap recently, I doubled checked to make sure it was not produced by AI. It wasn’t. If I could think of a genius way to convey my emotions on this point I would use it, but you will have to settle for millennial lingo: *swoon.

But back to the students in my office. They are not Chicagoans but they still wanted to stake claims of their own: “So, he went to a University named for Saint Thomas Aquinas? That means we basically went to school with him.” Such an assertion as theirs – linking the Ange and UST – is quite absurd, in one way, but totally understandable in another. You see, they, too, already loved you.

But Holy Father, what I am trying to say is that we all love you. Strangers have been stopping me in airports to say so. The Bobs of my Dad’s retired teacher coffee group (there are three!) have been perfectly delighted even though most of them are not Catholic. One woman, also a non-Catholic, stopped me at random and told me that she was praying for a sign from God – and your election was her sign! Another woman came up to me while I was visiting my family to tell me her story of remembering your mother – with her beaded glasses chain and her beautiful voice – and to wax eloquent about St. Mary’s, where she went to school and where she was married. My Sisters all have stories from their summer travels that are similar – people who want to return to church and feel connected to the faith in a way they never had before we had a Pope from Dolton.

This is life in America now. People stop you and tell you their Pope story.

But do they tell them to you? Because I have one, too – of course! Mine is a story of Augustinians, both general and particular.

General first: as people that follow the Rule of Saint Augustine, the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist are tickled to think of the successor of Peter seeing himself, as we do, in that little book of the rule as in a mirror, neglecting nothing through forgetfulness because it is read to you once a week. Augustine kind of gets into one’s bones in this way, so we are especially delighted. (I mean, we would probably be delighted anyway, but this adds to it, I assure you. For the record all of us volunteer to be part of your papal household and read you the Rule weekly, should you desire this.)

But there’s a particular Augustinian I want to mention: my classmate, Sr. Mary Margaret O’Brien, is the grand-niece of Father Dudley Day, OSA – or, as she taught us to call him, “Uncle Father Duds.” She has the charming tape of you at his funeral (she was touched that you were there) explaining that by Father’s third visit to your home in Dolton your Dad proclaimed that Father Duds, then vocations director, had nearly convinced him to enter seminary himself! Sister remembers visiting Father Duds in a parlor in Chicago when she was a little girl - she thinks that you probably lived there at the time while teaching at a local high school.

My point in telling you this is that Sr. Mary Margaret and I are planning on being in Rome this summer for the Canonization of Pier Giorgio Frassati, my patron Saint (more on this in a moment). She is contemplating a big sign that says “Dudley Day, OSA is my Uncle!” and I am 100% here for that. I’m toying with the idea of brandishing my nametag in a bid to get a good spot at the Canonization Mass, so we may get close enough for you to see the sign and greet her. Of course, if you wanted to intervene and get us good seats, one Chicagolander to another, I would not object, though I will not expect it – after all, you have 1.4 billion other Catholics to care for and Posen or no Posen, Rule or no Rule, Uncle or no Uncle, you have to think Universally. I understand. It could hardly make me love you less – on the contrary, most everything you have done so far makes me love you more.

A last story. On the day you were elected I went directly from my chatty students to an exam I was giving. I was excited because I had a Peruvian student who sat in the front row. Almost before I could even open my mouth, he said, “He confirmed me!” and showed me a picture of you laying hands on him to prove it – I got the impression that his mother took pictures of all her scrapbooks and sent them immediately to her children. Camilo is from Chiclayo, obviously.

“Can I get an A on the exam?” he asked.

“No, but how many pictures did you just send me?” (I wanted to pass the photos along to the University media team.)

“Three.”

“Well, then we all get +3 points on the exam!”

Much cheering ensued, as you might imagine. It probably inflated all the grades in that class a bit too much but I couldn’t help it: people in love do crazy things.

Listen, Holy Father –I suppose it is possible that you will eventually do something I find annoying, make some decision I do not agree with. I get that. In fact, changing the date of Pier Giorgio Frassati’s canonization – although to an objectively better date – is causing a mild amount of chaos as I try to figure out when Sr. Mary Margaret and I are going to Rome after all. And yet even this does not quell my general Midwestern sense of pride that you are one of us. Someone in Chiclayo commented that you loved to drive yourself places and if anything could tell me that you are from the American Midwest without telling me you are from the American Midwest, it is that. (“The Holy Father has sat in Chicago traffic! Probably after he went to White Castle!”)

But Holy Father, the main thing I want to say is: thank you.

In the lead up to the conclave, one of my students said, “Wait, people would not want to be Pope?” He was surprised. But I’ve been around long enough to see that the papacy is a burden. That in a real way Father Bob died when Pope Leo was born. That this is hard on your brothers, nieces, friends. It is both wonderful and horrible at the same time.

But someone had to do it. And it would have to be a good administrator with lots of language skills and doctrinal clarity and profound charity who loved Jesus enough to die to himself in a radical way. And that unicorn was you. And you grew up in Dolton. And Chicagoland loves you. And I am grateful.

I am not sure what a native Chicagoland Dominican Religious Sister English Professor living in Texas could ever do for you, but please consider me available if anything comes up. In the meanwhile, know of my prayers which, you can be sure, are said with the Midwestern nasal twang that is, at least at this moment, apparently God’s favorite accent.

Yours in Christ,

Sr. Maria Frassati Jakupcak, OP
Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist
Assistant Professor of English and Core Fellow, University of St. Thomas, Houston