VATICAN CITY — The Chicago delegation led by Mayor Brandon Johnson that met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican included a dozen leaders from various faith communities. They had a special request for the pope during their hour-long meeting with him on Thursday.
Bishop Horace E. Smith, senior pastor of the Apostolic Faith Church in Bronzeville, asked the pope if the group could pray for him. Flanked by Johnson, Roman Catholic and Protestant clergymen and two women — a rabbi and a Methodist pastor — standing at the center of the group, Leo received their blessing.
Johnson, who often cast the Vatican visit in spiritual terms, later said he felt the delegation’s audience with the Chicago-born pontiff had been profound, pastoral and comforting. He also called it “an affirmation.”
“The soul of Chicago is definitely in Rome and at the Vatican today — business leaders, labor leaders, community leaders, elected leaders, faith leaders, all coming together united in this moment to protect humanity,” he said in an interview Friday at a Caffé Portofino in Rome’s Prati neighborhood.
Many of the faith leaders who met with Leo used words such as “humbling” and “transformative” to describe the papal audience.
Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann
“I was moved in a way that surprised even myself,” said Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann of Mishkan Progressive Jewish Community in Ravenswood. “I found the whole visit to be an interesting cultural and religious experience up until the moment I sat in the room where we were all waiting, and there was his empty chair at the front of the room. Suddenly — and I’m getting weepy as I describe it to you — it suddenly hit me the number of people he stewards and carries as a religious leader. I don’t steward the spiritual lives of a billion Catholics. I run a progressive spiritual community in the city of Chicago with about 670 member families, but it’s been a rough couple of years as a Jewish religious leader.
“I felt — in that moment just seeing his empty chair, and then, when I had the opportunity to speak with him — just how he deeply understands that weight and models what I would say is an elegant and principled way of carrying it,” she said. “As an LGBTQ-friendly, inclusive community, as a female leader, as a Jew, we obviously have some major theological points of disagreement. But the areas where we share values were the reasons why we were there as a group from Chicago.”
When Smith gathered the group of faith leaders to bless and pray for Leo, it was a moment of “shared privilege,” the rabbi said. “It’s a privilege that comes with a weight that sits on our shoulders that actually felt a little bit lighter in his presence and in the presence of one another.”
Rev. Juan Vargas
Praying for the pope with leaders of other spiritual communities, both Christian and non-Christian, was “a moment of unity, and that’s why we’re here, speaking with one voice,” said the Rev. Juan Vargas, associate pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary parish, which serves Dunning and Portage Park on the Northwest Side. “Pope Leo has resounded and highlighted for us what the Gospel is calling us to do and how to live it out.
“When we talked, I said, ‘I’m praying for you, we’re all praying for you because it’s not easy,’ ” Vargas said of his minute or two speaking directly with Leo.
He told the pope, “When I preach from the ambo at mass, to hear your voice proclaim and in a way shout, even though you’re not physically shouting, what the gospel’s inviting us to, it really encourages me to also continue to bring that to light.’ ”
He said Leo thanked him for his prayers and said he was praying for the priest and his parishioners.
“He’s listening to our cry, whatever cry it is all over the world,” Vargas said. “He’s very attentive, and he’s responding.”
Michael Okiczyc-Cruz
A day after meeting Leo, Michael Okiczyc-Cruz, executive director of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership in Chicago, stood in St. Peter’s Square in front of “Angels Unawares,” the bronze sculpture by Timothy Schmalz that was installed by Pope Francis to mark the 105th World Migrant and Refugee Day. The weight of his encounter with Francis’ successor was fresh in his mind and reflected in his expression.
“In that moment, I was just overcome with emotion because of how difficult it’s been and how the work really has been led by our immigrant members,” said Okiczyc-Cruz, whose group recently reached a legal agreement after suing the federal Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to allow daily pastoral care at the Broadview ICE Detention Center.
“They organized from the bottom up to make this happen. It wasn’t theoretical for them. This is their lived experience. These are their family members who’ve been detained and deported or moved around the country. And they took great risk to show up to Broadview in the midst of Operation Midway Blitz. All of that was in my mind and in my heart, speaking to the pope. And for him to be attentive to this struggle…was just so moving.”
When he spoke briefly with the pope, Okiczyc-Cruz, who also teaches theology at Loyola University’s Institute of Pastoral Studies, said he was shocked that Leo — who is a canon lawyer — had read the text of the legal agreement and was knowledgeable about the case.
“The gospel and Jesus’ message in Christianity, in general, has often been used and manipulated and wielded as a cudgel throughout history,” Okiczyc-Cruz said. “When the pope speaks about violence or genocide and hunger and poverty and exploitation, he’s not speaking on these matters from a partisan political perspective. He’s speaking from the perspective of being a pastor and a follower of Jesus Christ and the pope of the Catholic Church…. That’s what carries so much weight for those who are Catholic but also for those who are not Catholic. These values resonate deeply, and that also shines through.”
Rev. Tanya Lozano Washington
“We’re living through a spiritual crisis as much as it is a political one,” said the Rev. Tanya Lozano Washington, pastor of Lincoln United Methodist Church in Pilsen and chief executive officer of the grassroots community organization Healthy Hood Chicago, which works to improve health in some o the city’s most neglected communities. “This world, in general, has built systems that normalize cruelty and isolation and greed and violence…. I truly believe humanity is hungry for a different way forward.
“As a pastor, I’ll say that the church is at its best when it tells the truth about power,” she said. “Whenever fear and nationalism and militarism become more sacred than human life, the church has a responsibility to speak. What I really admire and appreciate both about Mayor Brandon Johnson and Pope Leo is their willingness to speak with moral clarity in a time where the many leaders are too afraid to.”
Lozano Washington is the daughter of the Rev. Walter “Slim” Coleman, the late liberation theologian, civil rights leader, Black Panther Party member and a co-founder of the Rainbow-PUSH Coalition. Her mother is Emma Lozano, a longtime Chicago civil and immigrant rights activist and leader of the group Pueblo Sin Fronteras. Her uncle was Rudy Lozano, a Chicago Chicano and labor rights activist who helped Harold Washington get elected as the city’s first Black mayor in April 1983. Two months later, Lozano was killed in his home in what many believe was a politically motivated assassination.
“What I really appreciate about Pope Leo is his willingness to recover the prophetic tradition of the church, the tradition that asks not only how people are saved but whether the poor are being crushed, whether peace is being pursued and whether human dignity is actually being practiced,” Lozano Washington said. “That’s what [Leo is] speaking to the church in this moment. As a Christian, as a United Methodist, I feel deeply aligned with [Leo’s] message. And I’m so grateful to the mayor and the mayor’s team that put together such a diverse delegation…of faith leaders, business leaders, political leaders, labor and union leaders. It was so representative of the soul of Chicago.”
Meeting Leo along with many other Chicago leaders “made me feel like we really have everything we need to shift the culture towards a place that prioritizes humanity,” Lozano Washington said. “This was such a monumental moment not just for Chicago but for the world.”