Crowds larger than those that might typically gather at Rate Field on a sunny Saturday afternoon spilled out of CTA Red Line trains at Sox-35th, then quickly funneled into lines to have their bags checked and tickets scanned.
Many wore White Sox gear: jerseys, hats, old windbreakers. Families, friends and even groups of Catholic nuns all converged for the same reason.
They hadn’t come for baseball.
They’d come for the Chicago-born pope.
An estimated 30,000 people gathered in the ballpark for Pope Leo XIV’s first address to an American audience since he was elected last month.
In a nearly eight-minute video made exclusively for those at Rate Field, the Pope focused his message toward young people in the stands.
“You are the promise of hope for so many of us,” Leo said, his image projected on the jumbotron just beside a large Binny’s Beverage Depot ad. “The world looks to you as you look around yourselves and say: ‘We need you, we want you to come together to share with us in this common mission, as Church and in society, of announcing a message of true hope.”
The afternoon unfolded with prayer, song and a 4 p.m. mass led by Cardinal Blase Cupich. But before the formality set in, many took a moment to relish the beautiful strangeness of the scene.
Donna Makowski and Steve Siordia — friends for 27 years — rounded the corner toward the ballpark’s main entrance beside the team store, snapping photos of a group of nuns in white habits as they stood on the lawn.
Pushing a stroller with Siordia’s two young daughters, who were dressed in white dresses and glittery shoes for the occasion, the pair paused for a moment to take it all in.
“This is history. This is actual history,” Makowski repeated. “And it’s a good way to bring people back into the Church.”
For both of them, the setting mattered.
A ballfield. An American pope. It felt like a celebration of faith that could appeal to younger people, they said.
Siordia saw the event as particularly important because his older daughter, who did not attend Saturday’s celebration, had once opted to leave the Church, but has since found her way back.
Despite his appreciation of the moment’s solemnity, Siordia was still willing to crack a few jokes.
“It’s the only sellout of the Sox season,” he said with a chuckle.
Siordia wasn’t the only one with baseball on his mind ahead of Leo’s address.
Al Martinez, a South Side native, stood outside the park’s entrance, admiring a t-shirt he’d just won in a papal trivia contest. When a man wearing a Cubs jacket walked by, instinct kicked in.
“Hey police! We can’t let a Cubs fan in here,” he shouted toward a nearby Chicago officer.
Maybe it was leftover tension from the day Leo was elected, when Chicago’s National League team had rushed to claim him as one of their own. Maybe some rivalries run too deep for even papal unity to fix.
Nearly two decades earlier, Martinez sat at that same park, unaware that a future pope was attending the same 2005 World Series game he was.
“They could’ve picked a pope from anywhere in the world, but they decided to pick an American pope and he just happened to be from the South Side of Chicago and be a Sox fan,” Martinez said.
While Martinez reminisced on the days of yore, when his beloved team secured baseball’s highest title, he added a “blessing from the Vatican” to his list of things — like roster changes and a new stadium — that he thinks could make the team better.
Further off from the stadium’s entrance, Patrick Kennedy, who graduated from Villanova University, Leo’s alma mater, stood in the parking lot as he chatted with friends and strangers.
Trekking from the West Loop to attend Saturday’s service, Kennedy said that while “every pope is (his) pope,” he feels particularly close to Leo because of their shared Augustinian education, city and baseball team.
“Before becoming pope, before becoming cardinal and even before becoming a priest, (Leo) walked among us here in Chicago,” Kennedy said.
While many attendees wore their White Sox gear, Kennedy sported a Villanova Cross Country quarter zip and a “Jesuits Midwest” hat. He held a Chicago flag that swapped Leo’s face for its middle star.
Kennedy drew connections between Leo and his predecessor, Pope Francis, as both came from smaller religious orders that focused on community and service.
On a day when “No Kings” protests against President Donald Trump’s administration swept across the nation and a military parade rolled through Washington D.C., Kennedy thought it was particularly important to have an event like the one held at Rate Field.
He believed that while nonviolent demonstrations may be “the way some people carry out the Gospel,” many protests can get “hijacked” by those who have no intention of promoting peace.
Though Leo’s address was scheduled before word of rallies spread, Kennedy believed that its simultaneous occurrence prompted the perfect moment to come together and celebrate “our hometown son.”
“Here’s a man who’s going to be known worldwide, and he started here in Chicago,” Kennedy said.
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