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 long run pope and his household had 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 keeping with Noelle Neis, who remembers sitting behind the household on Sunday mornings.

“They had been at all times there,” Ms. Neis stated, including, “The group revolved across the church.”

At this time, the previous Catholic enclave on the South Facet of Chicago has primarily disappeared, with establishments shuttered and parishioners dispersing into the suburbs. Attendance at St. Mary of the Assumption declined dramatically through the years, and the congregation merged with one other dwindling parish in 2011. The mixed parish merged with one other two church buildings in 2019. The previous 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 creator of “Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter With Race within the Twentieth-Century City North.”

As a result of Catholic dioceses invested so closely of their bodily infrastructure, together with church buildings and faculties, white Catholics usually stayed longer of their neighborhoods than white residents who fled when Black individuals started to maneuver within the mid-Twentieth century.

“Catholic parishes had been neighborhood anchors in ways in which no white Protestant or white Jewish establishment was,” Dr. McGreevy stated. “When Catholics of a sure technology had been requested, ‘The place are you from?’ They’d say, ‘I’m from St. Barnabas,’ ‘I’m from Holy Identify.’”

Even in lots of altering Catholic neighborhoods, white residents ultimately moved out.

However within the booming days of postwar Chicago, Catholic households just like the Prevosts clustered collectively, attending the identical parishes, faculties and social occasions.

“The South Facet of Chicago, particularly again then, was very family-oriented, very Catholic,” stated the Rev. Tom McCarthy, who first met Pope Leo in Chicago within the Nineteen Eighties.

Father McCarthy, who grew up within the Marquette Park neighborhood on the South Facet, stated it was uncommon to not be Catholic within the space the place the pope grew up.

“I solely knew one household who wasn’t Catholic,” he stated. “You went to Catholic faculties, you stayed within the neighborhood, you labored exhausting, and I believe he’s a product of that.”

Pope Leo XIV, after all, didn’t keep within the neighborhood. He enrolled at St. Augustine Seminary Excessive College close to Holland, Mich., a boarding college for boys. And as he ascended via the Catholic hierarchy, he lived overseas for lengthy stretches, in Peru and Italy.

Chicago’s South Facet was solidly working class throughout Pope Leo’s childhood, stated Rob Paral, a researcher on the Nice Cities Institute on the College of Illinois Chicago. The household attended a South Facet church, however they lived in Dolton, a suburb simply previous the town line.

“It’s so far-off from the privileged suburbs of the north and west Chicago space,” Mr. Paral stated. “He’s actually from the grit and the actual Chicago, which lately is exemplified as a lot by the southern suburbs as it’s by something within the metropolis.”

The realm may be described partly by what it isn’t, Mr. Paral stated. “It’s not fairly, not leafy,” he stated. “You’re speaking about highways and trade and railroad tracks.”

Donna Sagna, 50, has lived subsequent door to the pope’s childhood house for about eight years, she stated, throughout a interval that has typically been troubled for the block.

She stated she had seen medication being bought close to the pope’s former home. Individuals moved incessantly, Ms. Sagna stated, usually to flee the violence and crime within the neighborhood. She stated she knew of nobody who nonetheless lived on the block because the Prevost household days.

The neighborhood has felt calmer lately, she stated, and she or he is thrilled to be dwelling subsequent door to a home with a all of a sudden notable historical past.

“I’m hoping this can convey some peace to the group,” Ms. Sagna stated.

The pope’s childhood parish, St. Mary of the Assumption, had grown quickly within the many years earlier than Leo was born, outgrowing two buildings and shifting into a 3rd that opened in 1957, when the long run pope was a toddler. The church remained busy and lively via the next many years, in keeping with interviews and church data.

However the constructing had structural issues, and attendance began to say no. In 2011, the archbishop of Chicago on the time, Cardinal Francis George, wrote that the constructing “is in such a state of poor restore that it isn’t protected to make use of.”

He mixed St. Mary of the Assumption with a close-by parish and ordered the constructing closed as a result of the realm “is so economically depressed and the Catholic inhabitants within the space is so small that there are inadequate assets to restore the church.”

Lots of the Catholic establishments that the Prevost household was related to met related fates. Mendel Catholic Excessive College, the place the pope’s mom labored as a librarian and his brothers went to highschool, closed in 1988. The elementary college within the South suburb of Chicago Heights the place his father served as principal shuttered two years later.

The variety of parishes within the Archdiocese of Chicago declined to 216 by 2024, from 445 within the mid-Nineteen Seventies.

In Dolton, 94 % of residents had been white and a pair of % had been Black in 1980. By the 2010 census, 5 % of Dolton residents had been white and 90 % had been Black.

Pope Leo’s mom died in 1990. His father, Louis, bought the household house in Dolton in 1996 after virtually 50 years, in keeping with county data. He died the following 12 months.

The pope’s childhood house, a modest brick home on a well-kept block in Dolton, bought final 12 months for $66,000, in keeping with property data. It was just lately refurbished and listed once more for $199,000. (This week, the actual property dealer managing the sale pulled it off the market to contemplate elevating the worth.)

Marie Nowling, 86, who lives 4 homes away, described the neighborhood as quiet. She moved into her home in 1999.

“Once I moved right here it was wild, numerous gangs,” Ms. Nowling stated. “But it surely’s a quiet, good neighborhood now.”

Mitch Smith and Robert Chiarito contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed analysis.