The church where Pope Leo XIV was an altar boy and attended mass as a child is now a vacant shell.
Inside the solid exterior of St. Mary’s of the Assumption, located on the far side of Chicago’s South Side, just the stained glass windows are still in place.
The state of decay is one sign of the decline in the Catholic Church’s influence and authority in America’s major cities.
Nevertheless, there is a noticeable buzz in the city, especially among Catholics, about the fact that the new pope is not just American, but also a native of Chicago’s South Side.
Mary Simons, a French teacher and local resident, came her mother to see St. Mary’s. “I flipped out when they said the new Pope was an American, I said ‘no way’!” Simons remarked.
