Earlier than he was Pope Leo XIV, and even Father Bob, he was the youngest of the three Prevost boys within the pews at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish on the far fringe of Chicago’s southern border.
The parish was bustling when the longer term pope and his household have been parishioners there within the Nineteen Fifties and ’60s. All three brothers attended elementary college on the parish college. Their mom, Mildred, was the president of the St. Mary Altar and Rosary Society, and carried out in performs there, in accordance with Noelle Neis, who remembers sitting behind the household on Sunday mornings.
“They have been at all times there,” Ms. Neis stated, including, “The group revolved across the church.”
Right this moment, the outdated Catholic enclave on the South Aspect of Chicago has basically disappeared, with establishments shuttered and parishioners dispersing into the suburbs. Attendance at St. Mary of the Assumption declined drastically over time, and the congregation merged with one other dwindling parish in 2011. The mixed parish merged with one other two church buildings in 2019. The outdated St. Mary constructing has fallen into disrepair, with graffiti scrawled behind the altar.
That transformation is in some ways the story of Catholicism in America, as modifications in city and suburban landscapes crashed into demographic and cultural shifts that radically reshaped many Catholic communities.
“It’s one of many nice dramas of twentieth century U.S. historical past,” stated John McGreevy, a historian on the College of Notre Dame and the writer of “Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter With Race within the Twentieth-Century City North.”
