Thousands of Catholics from across the Chicago area and beyond gathered June 14 at Rate Field, home of the Chicago White Sox, to celebrate Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born, Dolton-raised Augustinian and White Sox fan who was elected the 266th Successor of Peter on May 8.

The event featured musical performances, interviews with people who know Pope Leo and other entertainment leading up to a video message from the pope, directed to young people.

The pope, speaking, as Bishop Simon Gordon, jurisdictional bishop for the Midewst Region ofv the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship and president of the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago, said, “Chicago English,” first expressed his pleasure in greeting those gathered at “White Sox Park.”

Then, before the vigil Mass for the feast of the Holy Trinity, he addressed the need everyone, especially young people, has to find the connection and love that is expressed between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

A way to find that connection, he said, is to look to examples of faith, and to serve others.

“As you grow up together, you may realize, especially having lived through the time of the pandemic — times of isolation, great difficulty, sometimes even difficulties in your families, or in our world today — sometimes it may be that the context of your life has not given you the opportunity to live the faith, to live as participants in a faith community. ... God is reaching out to you, calling you, inviting you to know his Son Jesus Christ, through the Scriptures, perhaps through a friend or a relative … a grandparent, who might be a person of faith,” Pope Leo said. “But to discover how important it is for each one of us to pay attention to the presence of God in our own hearts, to that longing for love in our lives ... for finding the ways that we may be able to do something with our own live s to serve others.”

Serving others builds relationships, friendship and community, he said.

“In that service to others we may find that coming together in friendship, building up community, we too can find true meaning in our lives,” Pope Leo continued. “Moments of anxiety, of loneliness, so many people who suffer from different experiences of depression or sadness — they can discover that the love of God is truly healing, that it brings hope, and that actually, coming together as friends, as brothers and sisters, in community, in a parish, in an experience of living our faith together, we can find that the Lord’s grace, that the love of God can truly heal us, can give us the strength that we need, can be the source of that hope that we all need in our lives.”

Young people, he said, are a source of hope for the church and the world.

Following the pope’s message, Cardinal Cupich, several bishops and more than 50 priests concelebrated Mass at an altar set up in short center field.

The cardinal started his homily with a joke — “I think I’ll always remember this as the sermon on the mound,” he joked — before also striking the theme of connection to God and to one another.

Each of the three persons of the Trinity is aware that they are loved, and that they love the others. All people, made in the image and likeness of God, must be aware that they are loved by God “without condition.”

That conviction, Cardinal Cupich said, “can free us from the tyranny of being judged by others or from being held to the world’s standards of success.”

The three persons of the Trinity also always act in connection with one another, he said. In the same way, we are called to see ourselves as connected to the whole human family.

“Sadly, we too often hear voices attempting to define a portion of humanity as other or unconnected,” the cardinal said. “Humanity is diminished whenever the unborn or the undocumented, the unemployed or the unhealthy, are excluded, uninvited or unwelcome, or whenever we tell ourselves they are of no concern to us.”

That applies, he said, to immigrants and refugees, who have been the targets of scapegoating and demonization, especially those who are in the United States without legal status because of a “broken immigration system.”

“That is foreign to our calling to be persons in the image and likeness of God,” Cardinal Cupich said. “It is also dishonest, for indeed, so many of the undocumented have for decades been connected to us. They are here not by invasion but invitation — to harvest the fruits of the earth that feed our families, to clean our tables, homes and hotel rooms, to landscape our lawns, and, yes, even to care for our children and elderly. I have no doubt that if we are honest about our connections to one another, we can respond to this moment and thus reclaim our calling to live as authentic persons in the image of the Divine Persons.”

For many of the 750 volunteers who helped, connecting with their wider Catholic community was a powerful incentive.

“This is a historic moment for us to be here, to celebrate with our brothers and sisters in Christ as one family,” said Jennifer Davis, who ministers in liturgy and catechesis at St. Benedict the African Parish. She and other Tolton Scholars from Catholic Theological Union, where the pope was a student, volunteered as extraordinary ministers of Communion.

Each of 235 Communion stations throughout the park had a Communion minister and an usher.

Among the ushers was Candy Usauskas, principal of St. Mary, Star of the Sea School, and Barb Noel, a retired teacher from St. Patricia, Hickory Hills.

““I’ve had the blessing of getting to see the last two popes in person,” Usauskas said. “And I don’t know if I’ll make it to Rome again, or if Pope Leo will make it to Chicago. This is my encounter with the new pope.”

Augustinian Brother David Marshall is one of about 60 Midwest Augustinian friars, as the pope was. Before performing a song that he wrote, he distributed information and souvenir bags to people lined up to visit the Augustinians’ table.

He wasn’t expecting so much interest, he said, as he handed off his last bag.

“Usually we’re the ones trying to get our message out,” he said. “There are people here from Georgia, Texas, North Dakota, everywhere. This is truly a national event.”

Augustinian Father John Merkelis, a classmate of Pope Leo, and Sister of St. Agnes Dianne Bergant, who taught Pope Leo at Catholic Theological Union, were interviewed by master of ceremonies Chuck Swirsky, radio play-by-play voice of the Chicago Bulls and a reader at Holy Name Cathedral.

Before the conclave, Merkelis said, he emailed his confrere, then-Cardinal Prevost, and said, “No matter what happens, I’ll still like you.”

The soon-to-be pope replied, saying he was sleeping well because he didn’t expect the College of Cardinals to elect a pope from the United States.

Bergant remembered the pope, whom she taught when he was a seminarian, as a good student. And, she said, she still has the gradebooks to prove it.

“Wherever he is, he’s going to be one of the smartest men in the room,” Merkelis said. “And he’s humble. He’s deliberate. He’s thoughtful. He’ll listen to all sides, but he’ll make up his own mind.”

Other pre-Mass entertainment included students from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy who became a sensation when they held a mock conclave in the days before Pope Leo’s election, and the choir from Leo High School.

Cardinal Cupich thanked Jerry Reinsdorf, the White Sox owner, and the White Sox organization for hosting the gathering, and other sponsors, including platinum sponsor Loyola University Chicago.

Brooks Boyer, the team’s chief revenue and marketing officer, welcomed the congregation of more than 15,000 to Rate Field.

“It’s our home, it’s your home, and today, it’s a cathedral of celebration,” Boyer said, reminding the crowd that Pope Leo attended many White Sox games, including Game 1 of the 2005 World Series. The pope is welcome any time to throw out a first pitch, he said.

“Your Holiness, you wear a Sox cap like it was made for you,” he said.

As volunteers found their stations and members of the congregation lined up for “my first Mass at Rate Field” certificates, musicians from across the area practiced in the Leinenkugel’s Craft Lodge, under the right field bleachers.

Composer and arranger Peter Kolar, a former Chicagoan who works with GIA Publications, arranged most of the music for the Mass, which was performed by instrumentalists and a choir seated in the Miller Lite Landing section in right field.

The recessional hymn was a special arrangement of “We Are Marching.” In the middle, however, the choir broke into a baseball chant: “Let’s go, Leo, let’s go!”