Chicago high school cheers White Sox fan Pope Leo XIV — ‘He’s one of us’

Pope Leo XIV will always be Father Bob to Heidi Skokal.

Her dad, Ed Schmit, was close friends with Robert Francis Prevost for decades. The two were both die-hard Sox fans and often went to games together, including during the team’s 2005 World Series championship run.

Prevost officiated her sister’s wedding in July 2014. He blessed her son Anthony when he was born five weeks early. And when Schmit was sick and dying from pancreatic cancer, Prevost called him and the family often.

“He’s always been there for our whole entire family and was very, very close to my dad,” Skokal said. “And my dad told him all the time, ‘Father Bob, you’re going to be the next pope.’”

Schmit’s prediction came true when Cardinal Prevost was elected the first U.S.-born pope on Thursday. Skokal said that, though her dad died in 2020, he was smiling down from heaven at his old friend.

“He’s going to be so great for this world,” she said through tears.

When the news broke that Prevost was elected, she went straight from her home in Bridgeport to St. Rita of Cascia High School at 7740 S. Western Ave. in Ashburn to be with her 17-year-old son, Vince.

Vince, a senior at St. Rita, was walking through his school’s halls when the white smoke billowed out of the Sistine Chapel. And during the next class period, the news came over the intercom.

“We just started cheering,” Vince said. “It was a very cool, unreal moment … I sat there stunned. And then I went straight to talk to [school chaplain] Brother Joe and once he saw me, we just started crying.”

While Prevost didn’t attend St. Rita, his connection to the high school runs deep. The school follows the philosophy of the Augustinians, the new pope’s religious order. In the 1980s, he was a substitute and summer school teacher there for math and physics. And he’s stayed close to the staff over the years and has visited the school several times, said the Rev. Tom McCarthy, St. Rita’s chapel director.

It’s also not the school’s first connection to a pope. John Paul II visited the school, then known as Quigley Preparatory Seminary South, in 1979, McCarthy said.

During Wednesday’s Mass at school, McCarthy discussed the importance of the conclave, remembered Pope Francis and led the students in prayer for Prevost and all the cardinals.

“He’s one of us, an Augustinian, and the kids are so proud,” McCarthy said. “I emailed Cardinal Prevost on Tuesday, and just said, ‘We’re praying for you, Bob, and all the cardinals. Come, Holy Spirit.’ And he just said, ‘Thank you Tom, please pray.’”

In their senior theology class, St. Rita’s students were assigned to pick one of the 12 front-runners for pope and put together a presentation on who they are and what they stand for. James Kevin, 18, picked Prevost.

“We just figured we should go for Prevost, the Chicago guy. And then it’s crazy he actually won,” Kevin said.

Pat Conneely, also a senior, was especially excited that the new pope is also the first Augustinian.

“He represents the Augustinian communal values: truth, union and love,” he said. “That’s a good moral compass to live by.”

Tom Conlon, chair of the department of theology at St. Rita, picked the front-runner assignment to help familiarize his students with their potential future pope. He included Prevost but saw him as a long-shot choice, like most of the world.

“I was listening for those names, and all of a sudden, I hear Roberto Francesco. And I thought, what was that? Was that Robert Prevost?” Conlon said. “It seems like he’ll be a continuation of Francis, reaching out to the people, the marginalized.”

Deacon John Donahue, president at St. Rita, said the name a pope chooses comes with a lot of meaning.

“The last [Pope] Leo was the 13th, and he wrote a very powerful encyclical called Rerum Novarum, which was on behalf of the working people of the world,” Donahue said. “It’s very interesting. We’ll see what that means in the future.”

Vince, who has known Prevost his whole life, remembers him coming over to hang out with his grandpa.

“He is just the most gentle person, a very kind man,” Vince said. “My grandpa would take us out for milkshakes. And I remember Father Bob tagging along.”