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Pope Leo the White Sox Fan: Something to Celebrate for Chicago’s South Side
Stanley Brown was up late on Thursday, monitoring all the news about the new pope, Leo XIV, including revelations that he grew up as a Chicago White Sox baseball fan. As soon as Mr. Brown heard that, he knew something very important.
“If he’s a White Sox fan, then he can identify with suffering,” said Mr. Brown, 72, a village trustee in Dolton, Ill., the town where the pope grew up. “But it doesn’t matter how bad they are, we stay loyal as Sox fans. That’s not something you just give up.”
Chicago has long been divided between its two baseball teams, the White Sox on the South Side and the Cubs on the north. Both are known more for losing than winning over their century-plus histories. But the Northsiders usually attracted more attention as the cuddly, lovable Cubbies, with their boutique stadium, afternoon games, celebrity renditions of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and the hand-operated scoreboard at Wrigley Field.
The White Sox, playing inside a less charming stadium in a grittier part of town, are far from chic. But there is an unmistakable pride held by their fans, especially now.
The Cubs may have won the World Series more recently, in 2016, and may be considered a more fashionable brand. But the White Sox have the pope.
“That tells you he’s a real person,” said Courtney White, an athletic coordinator for youth sports in Dolton. “I mean, he’s from Dolton and he’s a White Sox fan. You can’t get more real than that.”
Being a White Sox fan is not easy. It requires devotion, loyalty, faith and above all else, forgiveness. It almost sounds like an internship for a job at the Vatican.
Pope Leo was born Robert Francis Prevost and grew up in a modest single-family house at 212 141st Place in Dolton, a middle- and working-class town just across the line from Chicago’s southern boundary. As soon as he was named pope on Thursday and identified as a Chicagoan, one of the first things people here wanted to know was, Sox or Cubs?
At first, rumors circulated that he was, gasp, a Cubs fan. But his brother John Prevost explained on WGN in Chicago that, although their mother’s family was from the North Side and harbored allegiances to the Cubs, the pope favored the White Sox (their father was a Cardinals fans, appropriately enough for the father of a prelate).
By Friday evening, his White Sox bona fides were validated. While living in Rome in 2005, he managed to make it to Game 1 of the World Series in Chicago. He was even spotted in the stands during the national television broadcast. The White Sox won the game, 5-3, and went on to sweep the Houston Astros for their first World Series title since 1917.
Pope Leo was born in 1955, amid a run of relative success for the White Sox. Weeks after he turned 4, they made it to the World Series, losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were decent over the next few years but weren’t able to make it back to the World Series again until 2005.
Robert Prevost was not particularly interested in playing sports, according to his friend, James Priestley, 69, a lawyer from Naperville, Ill., who attended both a seminary high school in Michigan and college at Villanova with the pope. Bob, as Mr. Priestley knew him, was more passionate about academics, philosophy and spiritual matters than who stole the most bases in 1961 (it was Luis Aparicio of the White Sox).
“I would say there is really no sports angle here,” Mr. Priestley said. “He was always such a sweet, caring, intellectual guy, exactly the kind of person you hope would become pope. But he didn’t talk much about sports, that I recall. If you asked him about Catholic doctrine or something like that, he could talk all day about that.”
When they attended St. Augustine Seminary High School near Holland, Mich., a boarding school for boys, all students were required to participate in sports. Mr. Priestley recalled the pope participating out of obligation rather than passion. He also recalled an annual party among their peer group to watch a Chicago Bears football game, and the pope attended at least one of those.
Mr. Priestley, on the other hand, is a devoted White Sox supporter, who just watched his team lose four straight games this week, in typically sloppy fashion. This is an organization that set a record last season for most losses — 121. The White Sox today are in a familiar spot, last place in the American League Central. The Cubs are in first place in National League Central.
“The tradition says that the Cubs fans are snooty and soft and the White Sox fans are tougher,” Mr. Priestley said. “I don’t really buy into all that. But I can tell you that there are some Cubs fans in the southland suburbs. I don’t think there are too many White Sox fans to the north.”
On Friday, the White Sox played their first home game since the pope’s election. Ann Allie, 46, a physician from Chicago, said she was worried when she first heard that the pope was a Cubs fan.
“I was relieved when I heard he likes the White Sox,” she said. “It’s really cool, and it makes sense.”
Art Ortiz, a web designer at the game with his family, is a rare example of a White Sox fan originally from the North Side. But he was taken to a game as a child in the 1980s, and fell in love. He hoped the new pope might help the fortunes of his club.
“It’s a blessing,” he said. “And we need it.”
About 20 minutes south of the stadium, Dolton has a rich baseball tradition, too. One street is named after Lou Boudreau, the Hall of Fame player for Cleveland, who grew up in nearby Harvey, Ill. The Dolton Boys was a Little League powerhouse for many years, until fewer and fewer kids participated. Mr. White, the athletic coordinator, played through high school and was coached by Mr. Brown, the village trustee. They said they were negotiating with the nonprofit The Players Alliance to help revitalize baseball in the town.
“Baseball used to be everything, until they rolled out that basketball,” Mr. Brown said as he looked over one of the municipal fields where he coached both his son and Mr. White. “Now, it’s hard to get kids to play.”
A few blocks away, in front of the pope’s childhood home, several people came to visit on Friday. Some, like Ralph Pizza, 65, a retired architect, grew up a few blocks away on 146th St., and said he and most of his friends were White Sox fans. But he did know some Cubs fans there, too.
John Crowley, a retired electrician, is 68 and from the North Side. He roots for the Cubs but dared to make the trip south. He is also Catholic, and wanted to see the house where the new pope grew up. He is thrilled that Pope Leo is from the Chicago area, but not as much that he is a White Sox fan. He promised not to hold it against him.
“It’s OK,” Mr. Crowley said. “They can use the help.”
new video loaded: Protester Hit by Car at Newark ICE Detention Center
By Cynthia Silva
June 6, 2026
A lifeguard overlooks an outdoor swimming pool.
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Teenagers hoping to hold the whistle as a lifeguard or camp counselor, or just work any job this summer are having a hard time getting hired.
“They now have more competition. There may be fewer jobs available,” says Brad Hershbein, an economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. “They kind of get stuck with the short straw.”
Many factors are contributing to the competition for entry-level jobs: AI, inflation, tariffs, even those oil tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf. But all signs are pointing to 2026 being the worst job market for teens in decades.
“So many people are increasingly desperate to find a job, any job, especially if they have college loans,” Hershbein says. “That makes it that much harder for someone younger to be able to compete.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 219,000 fewer teens working this May compared to last May. Their participation in the labor force has been sliding since a peak of nearly 58% in the 1970s. Today, about a third of teens are in the labor force, either working or looking for summer work.
Mariella Silva, 19, had to hustle before finding a summer job as a barista at Zeke’s Coffee, a roastery and coffee shop in Washington, D.C.
She says now that she’s working, she feels more grown up. She is learning from her older coworkers and starting to understand and appreciate the value of money. She says, “Every time I spend something, I’m like, oh, this is like two hours of work.” She says she really feels the pinch of inflation when she considers whether to buy a meal out in the world, “I’m like, hmm. . . there’s food at home.”
Her boss, Jesse Lauritsen, doesn’t actually hire many teens. For starters, their schedules are hard to accommodate. Teens often have school or sports commitments and are new to the idea of carving out big chunks of time for work shifts.
“If they can only work one day a month, there’s no point in really hiring them,” Lauritsen says.
Economist Brad Herschbein notes that hiring managers may view teens as an investment that won’t pay off right away. “It’s almost a community service, rather than getting that productivity right away,” he says.
The dwindling job opportunities for teenagers means that plenty of them won’t get their first workforce experience while they’re still young, he adds. “A growing share of 18- to 19-year-olds are neither employed nor in school. They’re not really engaged in child care either.”
Economists call such people “idle.” It’s a strong term, but might be accurate, according to time-use surveys.
“They do seem to be engaging in a lot of leisure,” says Hershbein “The quintessential stereotype is, you know, someone’s playing video games all day.”
That pattern doesn’t just worry their parents. Many cities and school districts are trying hard to line up job opportunities for young people.
At a community pool in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Gayle Hurn hires over a hundred lifeguards and swim instructors every summer: She says she’s got a roster full of teenagers from around the city. “I think we need to start viewing teens as a really important part of the infrastructure of the workplace.”
Hurn says everyone who visits the pool feels the joy that her young workers bring to their job, even if she admits that teenagers can be hard to manage. “It’s my job to help them not just get a paycheck, but really build them so that when they move on from me, they can be super successful and really great contributors to whatever other work environment they join.”
Hurn makes them put away their phones, she works around their vacation schedules and she helps them through difficult conversations.
Happily, she adds, her teen employees are totally worth it.
A ranger who was assigned to a climbing patrol on Mount McKinley in Alaska, North America’s tallest peak, died after falling into a crevasse on Thursday, the National Park Service said.
Officials identified the ranger as Robin Pendery, 33, of Enumclaw, Wash., a seasonal employee for the park service, and said she had been near a camp that sits at about 14,000 feet up the mountain when she fell. Parks Service workers responded immediately, the agency said, but Ms. Pendery did not survive. It did not release further details about the incident.
Ms. Pendery’s death came just over a week after three members of a Latvian climbing expedition died in an accident on the same mountain in Denali National Park and Preserve.
The Park Service said that Ms. Pendery had joined the mountaineering staff at the park in 2024.
“We are heartbroken by the loss of a member of our Denali family,” Brooke Merrell, the park’s superintendent, said in a statement. “Our mountaineering rangers dedicate themselves to serving visitors and helping others in one of the most challenging environments in the world. Today, we mourn the loss of a valued colleague, friend and teammate.”
Ms. Pendery was a nursing student at the University of Washington, according to her LinkedIn profile, and then became a registered nurse. She had nearly a decade of experience as a seasonal mountain guide, including for Alpine Ascents International, an expedition company based in Seattle.
A biography page for Ms. Pendery on the Alpine Ascents website said that, along with Mount McKinley, she had climbed Mount Rainier, Mount Baker and Mount St. Helens in Washington State and Mount Hood in Oregon.
“She was a serious and compassionate professional,” Gordon Janow, the director of programs for Alpine Ascents, wrote in an email on Friday. “Highly respected by peers, thorough, competent and an absolute pleasure to spend time with. We guided together in India, and her level of care for clients and passion for the mountains were unsurpassed. We’re devastated and her companionship will be sorely missed.”
Mount McKinley, which soars to 20,310 feet above sea level, was renamed as Mount Denali, the name long used by Alaska Native tribes, by President Barack Obama in 2015, but last year, President Trump reinstated the name that honored the former U.S. president William McKinley.
The recent stretch of the climbing season in the national park, which typically runs from late April through mid-July, has been particularly deadly.
Last week, three members of the Latvian Mountaineering Association died and a fourth was critically injured in what officials described as an accident at about 18,000 feet on the mountain.
The recent death toll is above average for the mountain, where more than 130 people have died since the park started keeping records more than a century ago. Three people died in Denali National Park in 2025, according to Park Service data, and there was one death in the park in both 2024 and 2023.
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