The same week I met Pope Leo XIV, I watched my eldest son graduate.
Like any parent, I felt immense pride seeing him step into adulthood. But I also found myself thinking about the wounded country and world he and his peers are inheriting.
Here in America, families are struggling with rising costs. Our immigrant neighbors, co-workers, classmates and friends are living with fear and uncertainty. Essential federal programs have been cut, while healthcare and food assistance are being stripped from the most vulnerable.
Overseas, wars continue to claim the lives of the innocent and devastate the remaining survivors.
As a father, those realities weigh on me. As a mayor, they remind me why I do this work.
What I want for my family is what I want for every family in Chicago: a country and world that are safer, more just and full of opportunity.
These challenges and our collective responsibility were at the front of my mind as I sat down with Pope Leo XIV, a fellow son of Chicago, whose moral leadership comes at a critical moment.
The pope and I spoke about the suffering caused by war, the need for peace in Gaza and Iran and the responsibility we share to elevate the voices of those living through hardship, both in Chicago and across the globe.
When touching on the harsh realities of our country as it approaches its 250th birthday, we discussed the enduring consequences of slavery and the unfinished work confronting that history. He understands the harms of slavery didn’t end with emancipation and that these wounds continue to shape disparities in wealth, health, housing and economic mobility.
But the pope was not interested in policy debates. He wanted to know how people “back home” were doing.
One of the first questions he asked me was how immigrant families have coped with aggressive enforcement actions? He asked how communities are confronting violence and unemployment. He asked how working families are managing amid rising costs and growing uncertainty.
As Juneteenth approaches, these are questions our country cannot ignore.
As the pope and I had agreed, the racial inequities we’re grappling with today didn’t emerge by accident. They are the result of generations of exclusion, segregation and disinvestment. That’s why Chicago continues advancing the work of our reparations task force and investing in communities that been left behind.
We have seen in Chicago that confronting that painful history, including the frayed relationship between the police and Black Chicagoans, is necessary to rebuild trust. Justice requires more than acknowledging history. It requires action.
The same principle guides our response to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
I shared with the pope that I have used the authority of my office to protect our residents from and fight to ensure Chicago remains a welcoming city. The targets of this terror are human beings seeking the same things every family wants: safety, stability and the opportunity to build a better life.
Chicago has always been at its best when our values are expressed through service, organizing and collective action.
That tradition runs through the work of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, one of America’s most influential civil rights leaders, whose Rainbow Coalition united working people across racial, religious and economic lines around a shared vision of justice.
It lives on in leaders like Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann and organizations like the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, who demonstrate that bringing people together, in spite of differences, is itself an act of justice. Their work reminds us how every person deserves dignity, opportunity and hope.
In many ways, that is what connected my conversation with the pope to Chicago’s own story. Whether through churches, mosques, synagogues, labor unions, businesses or community organizations, our city has produced generations of people who believe our responsibility to one another requires more than words.
When I met the pope, I brought gifts from Chicago, including copies of his parents’ DePaul University diplomas, letters from parishioners and immigrant families and a “Keep Hope Alive” sweatshirt from Rainbow PUSH.
But the most important present I carried with me were the stories of Chicagoans.
The pope also gave me a gift: the honor of spending time with a righteous and fearless leader who shares the belief that human dignity must remain at the center of public life.
I thanked the pope for his courage. I thanked him for using his voice to call for peace, human dignity and compassion at a moment when too many leaders are choosing fear and division.
The call before us is clear: Protect one another, defend human dignity, prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable, reject fear and division, and work toward justice and peace rooted in our shared responsibility to each other.
Brandon Johnson is the mayor of the city of Chicago.