First-ever pilgrimage celebrates Pope Leo with Mass, visits to papal boyhood landmarks

CHICAGO (OSV News) — On the first anniversary of Pope Leo XIV’s election, a group promoting the Catholic faith in Chicago’s south suburbs led an inaugural pilgrimage to his boyhood home and the church he attended as a boy.

The Pope Leo XIV American Legacy Foundation’s pilgrimage left downtown Chicago May 8 via shuttle bus and made its way to the first stop, Christ Our Savior Parish, known as “the de facto home parish” in South Holland, Illinois, of Pope Leo, who grew up as Robert F. Prevost.

“That location has the tabernacle from St. Mary,” Vince Kolber, chair of the newly established foundation, told OSV News. “What’s important about these three stops is that first we bring the Blessed Sacrament into our pilgrimage because Catholic pilgrimages do this. And Christ Our Savior is the nearest location of the Blessed Sacrament to the sites in south Chicago, St. Mary’s and the pope’s boyhood home.”

Overcast skies covered the day ahead as the shuttle pulled up to the box-shaped building with long stained-glass windows. The church, about two miles from his home, drew lots of attention in the early days of the pope’s election. And a year later, its sanctuary was more than half-filled for the special Mass of thanksgiving for Pope Leo.

Father Joshua Caswell, St. John Cantius Canons Regular superior, concelebrated the Mass.

“As people want to define who this Holy Father is — what is his agenda, his expectations — my dear friends, he has no other agenda than the salvation of souls,” he said in his homily. “So let us today on this anniversary of his election, pray for him, ask Mother Mary to comfort him, to be with him. And let us — you, my dear friends, you here on the South Side — not only to pray for him, but to be proud of him. Because what good can come from Dolton? The very best. May God bless Pope Leo.”

Christ Our Savior is the third iteration of the Prevost family’s home parish, St. Mary of the Assumption, located on the southernmost edge of Chicago, sandwiched between the villages of Dolton and Riverdale. Dolton, a south suburb, is where the pope lived until he was 13, when he went to the Augustinian minor seminary in Holland, Michigan.

In 2011, the Archdiocese of Chicago, citing dwindling attendance, merged St. Mary with Our Lady of the Apostles to form St. Mary, Queen of the Apostles. This parish then combined with two other area churches in 2019, as part of the archdiocese’s major overhaul, to become Christ Our Savior Parish. The parish church houses the original tabernacle of St. Mary of the Assumption. Young Robert Prevost and his brothers were altar servers at St. Mary of the Assumption and their parents were active in the parish.

Parishioners who knew the family and have remained through the consolidations told OSV News in 2025 the aging population at their parish was concerning. A year later, they said they were glad the pope was drawing in young people, not necessarily just to their church, but to the wider Church.

On the pilgrimage, Father Gosbert Rwezahura, Christ Our Savior’s pastor, told OSV News that in the year since the pope’s election, some young families have started going to Mass at the parish. He said the church being a stop along the new pilgrimage route would be good for the parish.

On the breakfast tables set up in the Christ Our Savior parish gym after Mass, “ways to support” forms for the fledgling foundation were laid out. The foundation, so far singularly funded by Kolber, is working to convert St. Mary of the Assumption into an oratory.

The St. Mary of the Assumption property made Preservation Chicago’s annual “Seven Most Endangered” list this year. The group, which joined the pilgrimage, is trying to get Chicago landmark status for the church building.

Preservation Chicago executive director Ward Miller told OSV News, “When we realized the pope was from this church, our awareness level increased dramatically. We made a tour of the building following this announcement.”

The property, surrounded by now impoverished suburbs, including Dolton and Riverdale, is owned by Joe Hall, a Chicago DJ. Hall has plans to turn the church’s seven-building campus into a workforce development hub with community mental health and memory care services, a food pantry and an arts program for youth. Hall’s JBlendz Enterprises, a nonprofit, projects a total $15.2 million budget for the entire project including the oratory. His nonprofit is working with the Pope Leo XIV American Legacy Foundation and Preservation Chicago.

Father Caswell led the pilgrimage gathering into the old church’s space with a still-broken rose window, but freshly covered up graffiti on the wall behind the altar area and the holes in the roof patched up. He reminded the group of about two dozen that, although the church was abandoned, it “still remains a sacred space.”

He told OSV News some months ago that he was giving a visiting bishop from Poland a tour of the church and the pope’s childhood home, when the bishop suggested the Chicago Archdiocese act quickly to preserve the church and pope’s home.

“Because he had seen what had happened in Wadowice, Poland, the homeland of John Paul II, he said, ‘You have to get ahead of this, because in time this will be a major shrine,'” said Father Caswell.

He brought up the possible preservation efforts at a recent presbyteral meeting of the archdiocese and said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich assigned him — on the spot — to look into it. Father Caswell then connected with Vince Kolber and became a board member of the foundation.

At the pope’s boyhood home, now owned by the Village of Dolton, the final stop of the pilgrimage — at least until an envisioned museum exists — the Midwest Augustinians blessed and hung a portrait of the pope in the living room.

Groups walked through the tiny, minimally unfurnished house and backyard, where Kolber was manning the exit route. He said “the Holy Spirit has been very, very busy” even since before the pope’s election, as he worked on revitalization efforts for the area with Dolton officials and members of the Greater Chicagoland Black Chamber of Commerce, which resulted in the foundation.

“Our mission, really, is to be the unifying presence of the Roman Catholic faith in this south land (south suburbs) of Chicago, where the Prevost family lived and enjoyed and worked,” he said.

Before entering the house, the Midwest Augustinians’ outgoing superior, Father Anthony B. Pizzo, first read from an email from Pope Leo, his classmate at Villanova University. He said the pope gave his “best wishes” to “the responsible parties” and reassured them of his “appreciation” for using the house to advance “social development.” He also read the pope’s message given that day in Pompeii, Italy, touching on love, unity and peace.

Father Pizzo then turned to the pope’s framed picture and prayed while sprinkling holy water: “We ask that you bless this portrait, which reminds us of our brother, who on the global level continues to call us to a deep and abiding and profound peace in dialogue, in friendship, in fraternity.”

He continued, “We ask that all those who pass through this home in the Village of Dolton, appreciate the hospitality of the citizens here and the residents of Dolton. And we ask that that hospitality, that welcoming, transforms our hearts, that we may be able to, in turn, clasp one another’s hands in that same friendship and fraternity.”

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