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Pope Leo's scandal-plagued hometown sees a bright future in buying his childhood home
Pope Leo’s childhood home in Dolton, Ill., is up for auction later this month.
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The Chicago suburb where Pope Leo grew up plans to purchase his childhood home and turn it into a historic site.
The Board of Trustees of Dolton, Ill., voted unanimously on Tuesday to put an offer on the three-bedroom, three-bath brick house, which is up for auction later this month.
At the meeting — which was livestreamed online — Mayor Jason House called the purchase a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for the village, which in recent years has been plagued by a series of scandals over alleged financial and political misconduct by its previous mayor.
“We can either seize this moment and move it forward, or we can let that moment go to an investor,” House said.
The May election of Pope Leo — the first American-born pope — has drawn national attention to Dolton, a village with an estimated population around 20,000 some 20 miles south of Chicago.
Leo — then known as Robert Prevost — grew up in the home on East 141st Place. His parents bought it new in 1949, paying a $42 monthly mortgage, according to member station WBEZ.
Prevost moved away for college and spent most of his career in Peru before rising through the Vatican ranks. His family sold the house in 1996, and ownership changed multiple times in the years since. Most recently, a local bought it as a flip property in 2024 and had been trying to sell it earlier this year — as the Roman Catholic Church was undergoing a seismic change in leadership.
According to WBEZ, the house was listed for $219,000 on May 5, just days after Pope Francis’ death and before the start of the papal conclave. But the listing was taken down by the time Leo emerged as the new pontiff.
Broker iCandy Realty and real estate auction firm Paramount Realty are offering it to the highest bidder by July 17, with a reserve price of $250,000 — the minimum the seller will accept. They say it was renovated in 2025, but remains a part of history.
“Pope Leo XIV’s journey from this humble neighborhood to the Vatican is a testament to faith, perseverance, and purpose,” its informational brochure reads. “Now, you have the rare chance to own a tangible piece of his inspiring legacy.”
Neither village authorities, the realtor or the auction firm involved have responded to NPR’s requests for comment about what Tuesday’s vote might mean for the property’s sale and future.
Some locals don’t see the house as a top priority
While the unanimous motion drew a smattering of applause in the room, not everyone is thrilled about this use of village funds.
Dolton has been plagued by financial and political scandals since well before the new pope put it on the map.
Its previous mayor, Tiffany Henyard, is the subject of multiple lawsuits and a federal investigation over alleged corruption, financial mismanagement and political retaliation during her four-year tenure.
Residents voted to recall her in 2022, but an appeals court later ruled that election invalid. In 2024, the Board of Trustees hired former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to investigate Henyard’s conduct.
Lightfoot shared the results in January, outlining a pattern of unchecked spending and deception by Henyard. One of her findings was that Dolton’s general fund balance had dropped from a surplus in 2022 to around $3.65 million in debt.
Henyard’s attorney accused Lightfoot of “political theater” in an effort to thwart her re-election campaign, which was unsuccessful. House beat her in the Democratic primary with 88% of the vote and was sworn in in May. And while Henyard’s legal troubles continue, House has pledged to get the village back on track.
His priorities include rebuilding trust between the local government and residents, as well as bringing new businesses to the area.
It’s against this backdrop that several concerned citizens came forward on Tuesday to question the house purchase, saying they would rather see an investment in basic infrastructure improvements, like fixing roads and filling potholes.
“We need to be mindful of addressing the issues that the city has while we’re trying to address the debts and the lawsuits,” the Rev. Ryan Reese said from the crowd. “I’m not sure that this is the first priority.”
Another resident, Mary Avent, said that while buying the house is “admirable,” she worries about whether the village can afford it.
“Even if we have the money, who’s going to maintain that?” she asked.
House said police and public works have been maintaining the property and will continue to do so.
“We’ve had charters come in here, we want to make sure that anybody that comes into our community is safe,” he said. “That’s a cost we will incur whether we own the property or not … Why would we not want to participate in that and get the benefit of this historic moment moving forward?”
House assured worried residents that the project will not derail from the board’s other priorities, adding that some roads would be repaved within days.
Officials hope history can fund the future
House said he wants the community to benefit from its history, and spoke of opportunities to get state and federal funds to do so. He stressed that attracting visitors would create much-needed revenue for the village, saying “you cannot cut your way out of a deficit.”
Several board members compared the pope’s house to the childhood homes of figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Michael Jackson, and the tourism opportunities it could create. The Jackson home in Gary, Ind., is unoccupied and owned by the family, while the King family sold two of MLK’s Atlanta homes — where he was born, and where he later lived with his family — to the National Park Service within the last decade.
“When we do it the correct way, in the long run, it will pay for itself,” trustee Tammie Brown said, adding that she’s already heard from supporters of the idea who want to donate.
Since May, camera crews and Catholic tourists have traveled from across the country to visit and take pictures outside of the two-story house (although some mistakenly flocked to the wrong one), according to local media reports.
On Tuesday, the Village of Dolton posted photos to its Facebook page of workers repairing the building’s roof. It said the house continues to attract visitors, “bringing new energy and attention to our village.”
“This increased traffic represents a new day in Dolton — full of potential, progress, and promise,” it said.
BALTIMORE — The Justice Department on Tuesday announced 18 charges against the operators of the 100,000-plus-ton cargo ship that crashed into a Maryland bridge more than two years ago, causing it to collapse and killing six people.
Federal prosecutors said they were charging the international companies Synergy Marine Pte Ltd and Synergy Maritime Pte Ltd, as well as ship technical superintendent Radhakrishnan Karthik Nair. The charges included conspiracy and misconduct or neglect of ship officers that resulted in death and obstruction.
The two companies and technical superintendent were also charged with conspiracy, willfully failing to immediately inform the U.S. Coast Guard of a known hazardous condition, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and false statements, according to a statement announcing the charges.
The companies were also accused of misdemeanor violations of the Clean Water Act, Oil Pollution Act and Refuse Act, the department said. Those charges are related to the discharge of pollutants into Maryland’s Patapsco River, including the shipping containers, their contents, oil and the bridge itself.
The 900-foot ship Dali lost power twice and slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early hours of March 26, 2024, as a work crew was fixing potholes.
Six construction workers died when the bridge went crumbling down into the Patapsco River. Another construction worker fell into the waters below and sustained serious injuries but survived, while an inspector working as a subcontractor for the Maryland Transportation Authority escaped the collapse without injuries. The nearly two dozen crew members on the ship survived, along with two pilots who were helping the vessel navigate the harbor.
The construction workers were Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, Carlos Daniel Hernandez Estrella, Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, Jose Mynor Lopez, Miguel Angel Luna, Maynor Yasir Suazo Sandoval and survivor Julio Cervantes Suarez.
Cervantes Suarez told NBC News in July 2024 that the men who died, who were all Latino, included his nephew, brother-in-law and friends he had known for years.
“Alejandro, Miguel, Dorlian, Maynor, Carlos and Jose were making our roads safer when they lost their lives on that fateful day in March 2024,” said Jimmy Paul, a special agent in charge with the FBI’s Baltimore field office. “The collapse should never have happened.”
The collapse brought the critically important Baltimore port to a standstill for two months and reconstruction of the bridge is ongoing.
“The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge was a preventable tragedy of enormous consequence,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement announcing the charges. “This indictment is a critical step toward holding accountable those whose reckless disregard for maritime safety regulations caused this disaster. Six construction workers lost their lives, critical infrastructure was destroyed, pollutants were released into the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay, and the economic damage now exceeds five billion dollars.”
“This Department is committed to securing justice for the victims and ensuring those responsible are held to account,” he said.
The company Synergy Marine Pte Ltd is based in Singapore and Synergy Maritime Pte Ltd is based in Chennai, India, according to prosecutors. Nair, 47, is an Indian national who was a technical superintendent of both companies.
Prosecutors said they believe the ship’s technical superintendent is in India and that they would use all available law enforcement tools to bring him to the U.S. to face charges.
A National Transportation Safety Board report determined that the 947-foot-long Singapore-flagged cargo ship was transiting out of Baltimore harbor when it lost power and propulsion before striking the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Maryland U.S. Attorney Kelly Hayes said at the news conference Tuesday that the defendants allegedly altered the ship in a way that meant it could not regain power after the second blackout in order to avoid crashing into the bridge in time.
Cervantes Suarez said he hopes people remember those who died.
“I knew all of them, they were families. They were good people, good workers and had good values,” he said.
Gary Grumbach, Tom Costello and Owen Hayes reported from Baltimore. Daniella Silva reported from New York City.
The maker of Canvas, the software used by thousands of schools and universities around the world, said on Monday that it had reached a deal with the hackers that recently breached its systems for the return of stolen data and the destruction of any copies.
ShinyHunters, a hacking group, had claimed responsibility for the attack on Instructure, the Salt Lake City-based company that provides Canvas to about half of all colleges and universities in North America.
The hackers said they had accessed the data of more than 275 million users at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide, including private conversations between students and teachers as well as personal identifying information such as names and email addresses. Canvas was shut down for hours after the cyberattack on Thursday.
The agreement, Instructure said in a statement, involved the return of the stolen data and confirmation that the data had been destroyed at the hackers’ end. Instructure added that it had been informed that none of its customers would face extortion as a result of the theft.
“While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cybercriminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible,” the company said.
Instructure did not say what it had given the hackers in exchange for the return of the data. The company did not immediately respond to questions about the deal.
Canvas has more than 30 million active users around the world, according to Instructure. The platform is used by teachers and students for coursework management and communications. Instructure said the data compromised in the hack included usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information and messages.
ShinyHunters on Thursday claimed the attack in a message that appeared on students’ Canvas pages and was obtained by The New York Times. The group warned that it would leak an unspecified amount of data on May 12 if it did not receive a response from Instructure. In its May 3 ransom note, the group had threatened to leak “several billions of private messages among students and teachers.”
Not much is known about ShinyHunters, which is believed to have been formed around 2020. Its goal appears to be to obtain personal records and sell them. One of its high-profile attacks was against Ticketmaster in 2024, when the hackers said they had stolen the user information of more than 500 million customers.
Instructure said it first detected unauthorized activity in Canvas on Apr. 29, and again on May 7. The company said it took Canvas offline to investigate the breach, and also informed the F.B.I., the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other international law enforcement partners.
Instructure did not immediately respond to questions about whether any law enforcement agencies were involved in its dealings with the hackers. The F.B.I. advises against paying ransom to hackers, saying it does not guarantee data security and encourages attackers to target more victims.
The National Quarantine Center is located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
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Nebraska Medicine
Sixteen of the 18 passengers transferred to the U.S. from a cruise ship where there was an outbreak of hantavirus arrived in Omaha, Neb., on Monday for evaluation after disembarking the vessel in Spain’s Canary Islands over the weekend.
Of the 15 U.S. citizens and one dual U.S.-British citizen who arrived in Nebraska, all but one are currently being housed in the National Quarantine Unit. That patient tested positive for the virus and was being housed in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, officials said at a Monday news conference. The 15 people in the quarantine unit will continue to be monitored for signs of the illness.
Passengers carry their belongings in plastic bags after being evacuated from the MV Hondius after docking in the Granadilla Port on Sunday in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, Spain.
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Nebraska may seem an unlikely location to process these individuals, but it is home to the National Quarantine Unit — the only federally funded quarantine unit in the U.S. — and the separate Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. They are highly specialized facilities located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and widely considered among the best in the world.
The $1 million, five-room biocontainment unit was dedicated in 2005. It was a joint project with Nebraska Health and Human Services and the UNMC. It is set up to safely provide medical care for patients with highly hazardous and infectious diseases and was used in 2014 to treat two doctors infected with Ebola. The National Quarantine Unit was completed in late 2019. It cost nearly $20 million, according to the Associated Press. Both facilities were used during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” Dr. Michael Ash, CEO of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. “Our teams have trained for decades alongside federal and state partners to make sure we can safely provide care while protecting our staff and the broader community. We are proud to support this national effort.”
Two additional U.S. passengers on the cruise ship — a couple, with one showing symptoms of hantavirus — were transferred for monitoring to Emory University Hospital, where another advanced biocontainment facility is located.
When the biocontainment unit was first dedicated more than 20 years ago, the biggest concerns were anthrax attacks and severe acute respiratory syndrome, more commonly known as SARS, Dr. Phil Smith, who spearheaded the efforts at Nebraska Medical Center to create the biocontainment unit, told the AP in 2020. Smith died last year.
A hallway leading to rooms at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
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The quarantine unit features 20 negative-pressure rooms designed to keep potentially harmful particles from escaping by maintaining lower air pressure inside than outside the rooms. The single-occupancy rooms provide patients with attached bathrooms, exercise equipment and Wi-Fi, according to the medical center.
“We have protocols in the quarantine unit that provide for safe care of these of these persons, including just all the activities of daily living so that they can … have a comfortable stay but also have it in an area that’s protected and limits spread of the pathogen,” Dr. Michael Wadman, the medical director of the National Quarantine Unit, said at a Friday news conference.
The biocontainment unit, by contrast, is a patient-care space where people are able to receive medical treatment, Dr. Angela Hewlett, medical director of the biocontainment unit, told reporters Monday.
She emphasized that the facility — which has a 10-bed capacity — operates independently from the quarantine unit and has its own dedicated air-handling system. “We don’t share [it] with any of the rest of the facility,” she said, noting that the unit uses rooftop HEPA filtration and is designed “very differently” from what most people typically imagine in a hospital setting.
One of the rooms in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
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Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, speaking at Monday’s news conference, welcomed the recently arrived patients, who are among nearly 150 people from 23 different countries who were aboard the MV Hondius when the illness most commonly transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents broke out. As of Monday, the World Health Organization has reported at least nine cases of hantavirus, including three deaths.
“We’re glad that you’re here,” Pillen said. “We’re going to ensure that you have the best world-class care possible.”
Pillen also sought to reassure Nebraskans that the facilities are safe and secure: “We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time,” he said. “No one poses a risk to public health, just walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha.”
The hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship has been identified as the Andes strain of the illness, one that can be spread, though rarely, from person-to-person, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can cause severe respiratory disease, with early flu-like symptoms.
“The Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged, close contact with someone who is already symptomatic,” according to Adm. Brian Christine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who spoke at Monday’s news conference. “Even so, we have taken this situation very seriously from the very start.”
“The risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very, very low,” he said.
The full quarantine period for hantavirus is 42 days, Christine said, but he added that the patients would be allowed to go home if they remained asymptomatic.
“Right now, the passengers that are all in the assessment phase — they’re going to be here for at least a few days while we do assessments and the coordination on what happens next,” he said, adding that they had the option to remain in the quarantine facility for the full period, for “the safest and most effective option for them.”
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