Pope’s Childhood in a Changing Chicago Tells a Story of Catholic America

U.S.|Pope’s Childhood in a Changing Chicago Tells a Story of Catholic America

Before he was Pope Leo XIV, or even Father Bob, he was the youngest of the three Prevost boys in the pews at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish on the far edge of Chicago’s southern border.

The parish was bustling when the future pope and his family were parishioners there in the 1950s and ’60s. All three brothers attended elementary school at the parish school. Their mother, Mildred, was the president of the St. Mary Altar and Rosary Society, and performed in plays there, according to Noelle Neis, who remembers sitting behind the family on Sunday mornings.

“They were always there,” Ms. Neis said, adding, “The community revolved around the church.”

Today, the old Catholic enclave on the South Side of Chicago has essentially disappeared, with institutions shuttered and parishioners dispersing into the suburbs. Attendance at St. Mary of the Assumption declined dramatically over the years, and the congregation merged with another dwindling parish in 2011. The combined parish merged with another two churches in 2019. The old St. Mary building has fallen into disrepair, with graffiti scrawled behind the altar.

That transformation is in many ways the story of Catholicism in America, as changes in urban and suburban landscapes crashed into demographic and cultural shifts that radically reshaped many Catholic communities.

“It’s one of the great dramas of 20th century U.S. history,” said John McGreevy, a historian at the University of Notre Dame and the author of “Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter With Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North.”