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VATICAN CITY — Mayor Brandon Johnson said the most memorable thing about his private meeting Thursday with Pope Leo XIV was the “real exchange with one of the most influential global religious leaders around how the legacy of slavery has had a devastating impact on our globe.”
That and the role the church and government can play “is what’s sticking out the most for me right now,” he said during a news conference shortly after the meeting.
Leo on Monday had used his first papal encyclical to apologize for the role the church played in legitimizing what he called the “scourge of slavery” and failing to condemn it for centuries.
On Thursday, Johnson gave the pope a letter, inviting him to come to Chicago to deliver Mass in Grant Park in 2027. [Read the text of the letter.]
Johnson said he and the pope also talked about the mayor’s City Council vote calling for ceasefire in Gaza, endless wars, conditions people are living through whether in Chicago, Haiti or Venezuela, reparations and why it’s important to repair harm caused by the “brutal legacy of slavery” and affordability.
Johnson and his delegation spent about an hour with Leo during their meeting at around 4 p.m. local time in Italy. The delegation presented him with some two dozen gifts, including the DePaul University diplomas of Leo’s parents, letters from Englewood parishioners and Frango mints. [Read a list of all the gifts they gave the pope.]
Johnson wore a black suit, black tie, white shirt and a Chicago flag pin. He’s in Rome with a 45-member delegation of Chicago officials and business leaders.
Members of the delegation were able to speak to the pope after Johnson’s meeting with Leo. Some got on their knees and kissed his ring, said Guy Chipparoni, chairperson of Choose Chicago, the city’s tourism and convention agency. Chipparoni said Leo was asked if he would consider leading a Mass in Grant Park in 2027.
“And he was just smiling, and he said, “I’d like to do that.”
Another delegation member, City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, said what struck her was Leo’s message “to be kind to one another… He really had a great message for us today. I just feel blessed to be in this moment. We’re from Chicago, we’re the delegation, and we’re proud the pope is from Chicago. But this is a moment for everyone to be proud… I want us to appreciate the moment.”
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), part of the delegation and Conyears-Ervin’s husband, said before visit, “It should be great for our city, great for a lot of folks who need hope… And I believe that Pope Leo would provide the hope that people need to see.”
Ervin, who brought a T-shirt reading “God Bless the West Side,” said he would love to see the pope come to Chicago. “I want him to come to the West Side. We have one of the oldest basilicas in the city, Our Lady of Sorrows. So I want him to come to the West Side of Chicago, to Garfield Park and be a blessing to the people of the West Side.”
Restaurateur Phil Stefani, who was riding in the front passenger seat of one of the half dozen or more black vans entering the location of the papal audience, said he was looking forward to the conversation with Leo today. He’s met the pope before because he and fellow restaurateur Art Smith are working on a project at Borgo Laudato Si’, part of a historic papal retreat.