Above the door of the church in the last blocks of Chicago, the Virgin Mary still stands with her arms wide open.
The double doors beneath the statue’s feet are shut, but a disintegrating wooden side door swings freely, leading to a set of stairs with chipped paint scattered on them. Above, a pool of blue light from a stained-glass window illuminates a balcony where the St. Mary of the Assumption Church choir — including a young boy who would later become the first American-born pope — once sang.
Antoinette Nuzzo stepped inside the sanctuary earlier this week, took a look around and thought out loud: “Wow, they took a lot of stuff out of here.”
Nuzzo, 71, had not been inside St. Mary’s since the church’s final Mass in the summer of 2011. But she came back Thursday to see what remained of the old sanctuary because it is where Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, began his formal religious journey.
The rail where Nuzzo knelt for her first communion as a fourth-grader was gone. The front of the sanctuary where Prevost first served the Catholic Church as an altar boy was covered with two pink and orange graffiti murals, the result of neglect after a series of closures and downsizing ordered by the Archdiocese of Chicago, which sold the parish property in 2019.
An alcove that once held a statue is now empty and spray-painted with the words “Oh My God.” Nuzzo wondered if the religious sculpture went to the still-operational Christ Our Savior church in South Holland, which absorbed many former St. Mary’s parishioners.
Many others made the same trip in Leo’s first hours as pope, wanting to feel a connection with the South Sider who had just appeared in papal regalia on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. They posed for pictures outside the building and walked gingerly around the crumbling interior, agog that the first American to lead the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics could have roots there.
And in doing so, they may have been the site’s first unofficial pilgrims.
The Chicago area does not lack for holy Catholic sites. The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in northwest suburban Des Plaines draws thousands of pilgrims for La Virgen’s feast day every December. The Shrine of All Saints in Morton Grove bills itself as the second-largest collection of relics in North America.
But becoming the hometown of the first American pope could bring crowds on a different order of magnitude to the south suburbs and the city’s South Side. Many sites associated with past popes’ lives and upbringings have become museums or holy destinations for the faithful, and papacy-themed tourism more broadly often flowers in popes’ hometowns. Benedict XVI’s birthplace in Germany and John Paul II’s old family home in Poland are both now museums, and themed tours of the cities where they spent parts of their lives abound on the internet. The grand basilica where Pope Francis was baptized in Buenos Aires has become a popular stop for tour groups, as well.
People who gathered outside the abandoned St. Mary of the Assumption on Thursday mused about what the future might hold for Pope Leo XIV’s childhood church, given its new significance.
“If he was baptized here, it’s a historic place,” said Oak Lawn resident Steve Ligda. “I bet (the archdiocese) wishes they didn’t close it now.”
Aaron Hollander, a scholar of theology and culture based in New York, said it made sense for people to spontaneously come out to the church as they sought a sense of connection to the new pope. But the site’s religious status in the long term still remains to be seen.
“It will depend in part on what Pope Leo does and what he becomes and how his relationship with the faithful changes over time,” he said.
Hollander said it’s likely there may be a push to formalize the site’s status as a destination but cautioned that there was no way to predict the intensity of organizing or the official response from the archdiocese.
Emily Crews, a scholar of religious life at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said it would be “fascinating” to observe whether St. Mary’s or Leo’s childhood home, a few blocks away on the 200 block of East141st Place in Dolton, draw religious tourists or pilgrims given their newfound significance to the history of the church. A key factor will be whether the archdiocese would buy either the church or the home, she said.
A spokesperson for the archdiocese said there were no plans to repurchase the old parish property and couldn’t comment on the future of the pope’s childhood home..
So the future of the church remains unclear.
The archdiocese merged St. Mary of the Assumption with Queen of Apostles in Riverdale in 2011 to become the St. Mary, Queen of Apostles church. The archdiocese spokesperson said the new congregation was placed at the Riverdale church building because it was in better condition. That congregation merged with two others in 2019 to become Christ Our Savior, according to the archdiocese.
Cook County tax records show the archdiocese sold the St. Mary of the Assumption property — which encompasses the church itself, the school, convent, rectory and annex — to a company called Eugene Benjamin Properties in 2019 for just under $250,000. Then the property was sold again in 2022 to the South Side-based JBlendz Holdings, records show.
JBlendz Holdings bills itself online as a telecommunication infrastructure maintenance firm.
One of the company’s owners, Joe Hall, fielded questions from reporters Thursday afternoon on the cracked front walk as people trickled in and out, taking smartphone photos.
Asked why the site has stood apparently untouched since it changed hands three years ago, Hall cited a series of weather-related setbacks.
He said his ambition was to renovate the five buildings on the parcel for community development uses, including a food pantry, and to get it equipped with free Wi-Fi.
Hall said he had planned to keep the church building itself as a space of worship. But he acknowledged that the news from Vatican City might scramble the rest.
“Whatever plan we thought we had, it’s all been changed in the last few hours,” he said.
That said, he added, he would not sell or lease the property “unless it had anything to do with the pope, period.”
Late on Thursday, Dolton Village Trustee Stanley Brown took in the church’s facade from beneath his black cap. He’d passed by the building for years, he said. And he was chuffed to know that it suddenly had a place in the history of the Catholic Church, particularly after the village had weathered years of political turmoil.
“For all the things we’ve been going through, (God) sent us the pope here in Dolton,” he said. “So that is a blessing.”
It was early evening by the time Laura Mathews traipsed through the building in her neon crossing-guard vest and reflective sunglasses. Every few steps, she’d shout, “I remember this!”
Mathews, 71, remembered wearing the blue and white jumper uniform as an elementary student at St. Mary’s, and trying to stay out of the way of one particular nun, Sister Cecilia.
She said she’d never forget the thunderstorm the night of her first communion. She recalled glaring at the crucifix the first Easter after her mother died. As a young woman, she quit going to church and questioned her faith. Eventually, she said, she came back around.
Nuzzo reminisced about the white dress and the hat with flowers she’d worn for her first communion.
They both remembered the pope’s parents, a school superintendent and a librarian, reading in front of the congregation, and picnics on the back lawn and carnivals in the parking lot. They remembered where the baby room had been and where the rosaries had been kept.
Looking around for the first time in 14 years, they saw the stained glass had largely survived.
The place was gutted. The air smelled like must.
But looking up at the windows, the friends were amazed by how much — including the memories — remained.
