In Ode to Pope Leo XIV, 40,000 White Sox Fans Exchange the Sign of Peace
Sister Mary Jo Sobieck threw the first pitch and every fan got a mitre. And I’m told a meeting between Pope Leo XIV and Barack Obama — the club’s two most famous fans — is moving closer.
The best thing I’ve seen on the internet this week came out of the fifth inning at Rate Field, where a sellout crowd of White Sox fans in papal miters turned to the people beside them, extended their hands, and exchanged the Sign of Peace.
Father Tom Hurley, the priest who led Chicago’s famous Old St. Patrick’s Church for nearly fifteen years, and the comedian Pat McGann led the semi-liturgical rite from the stands, and the crowd (strangers included) took it up with neither a trace of discomfort nor irony.
Clips of the moment went viral on social media almost immediately. By this morning, a sold-out American ballpark exchanging the ancient Catholic liturgical rite had become the rare thing the whole internet agreed to love.
I immediately recognized the priest. For a short time during the 2012 campaign, when I worked in Chicago for President Obama’s re-election, I was a regular at Old St. Pat’s, and I never expected to see its former pastor go viral on social media.
A few weeks ago, I received an invitation to that game. Professional and personal responsibilities kept me home, and declining felt like the responsible choice at the time. But in retrospect, I definitely missed out on a night that clearly meant a great deal to the ballclub and its city, and, judging by how far the clips traveled, to a country starved for exactly this moment.
“Peace be with all of you!” Those were the first words Robert Prevost of Chicago spoke to the world on May 8, 2025, when he stepped onto the central loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica as Pope Leo XIV.
He described what he was offering that evening as the peace of the risen Christ, “a peace that is unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering.” Fifteen months later, his hometown baseball team turned his greeting into a stadium-wide rite between the top and bottom of the fifth innings.
The White Sox have been leaning into their pope all season, and they have good reason to do so.
The future Pope Leo XIV sat beside the late Ed Schmit, the family friend who brought him, at Game 1 of the 2005 World Series. A mural commemorating that night was erected on the concourse near Section 140 within weeks of his election, marking the future pontiff’s old seat.
Last night grew out of that moment. What began as a themed-ticket promotion for 2,500 fans became a ballpark-wide giveaway of roughly 40,000 mitres, expanded, in the team’s words, “due to overwhelming fan demand.”
Brooks Boyer, the Sox’s chief marketing officer, said: “The fans have spoken, and unlike some of our more limited quantity promotions, the White Sox Pope Hat is one we believe all fans should have the opportunity to take home.”
The details of the evening were tuned with real care. Nancy Faust, the beloved organist of four decades of Sox baseball, performed the national anthem.
The club presented a $14,000 check to the Midwest Augustinians, the pope’s own religious family. John Prevost told reporters his brother knew all about the night. One fan, Annie McClung, told ABC7: “You look out. Everyone’s got the hat. That’s family.”
The first pitch was from Sister Mary Jo Sobieck, the Dominican Sister of Springfield who became a national sensation on that same mound in 2018, when she popped the ball off her bicep before firing a perfect strike, a feat that earned her an ESPY nomination.
Her pitch last night felt just short of the plate, but the crowd roared anyway.
I follow her on Instagram, and I recommend it. When the news of the week runs grim, a Dominican sister showing off her curveball is a reliable pick-me-up.
A nun commanding a Chicago sports crowd carried an air of succession. Chicago is the city of Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt, the Loyola Ramblers’ chaplain who became the patron saint of March Madness several years back and died in October at 106.
I wrote her farewell in these pages. Chicago has a way of putting its best nuns exactly where the cameras are, and then letting them preach without saying a word about God.
As for the baseball: Sean Burke threw seven innings of one-run ball and struck out eight. Brenton Doyle, Edgar Quero and Miguel Vargas each homered, and the Sox led 4-0 after four. Then the bullpen let Cincinnati tie it in the eighth, and the Reds won 5-4 in ten innings.
On a night when the ballclub handed a bishop’s hat to everyone through the gates and put a nun on the mound, they blew a four-run lead; the Sun-Times headline began, “No divine intervention for White Sox.”
God’s ways are a mystery to us below.
Here is the thing, though. Even after the loss, the White Sox woke up this morning in first place in the American League Central at 61-57, 2.5 games up on Detroit. This is a franchise that lost 121 games two years ago, the most in modern major-league history.
Nobody in baseball can fully explain the turnaround, which is why half of Chicago is arguing that divine intervention took the perennially bad Sox to the top of the division. When the local team climbs from historic disgrace into a pennant race during the first full season of a South Side pope, you can forgive the fans for drawing their own conclusions.
The Sox are also, famously, Barack Obama’s team. In February, the former president told the progressive journalist Brian Tyler Cohen that the person he most wants to meet is Pope Leo XIV. “I want to meet the pope, and I hope I get an opportunity sometime in the future,” Obama said, predicting that “at some point it’ll probably happen.”
As I reported in March, people around both men have been working toward that meeting, and David Axelrod, Obama’s longtime strategist, has already had his audience with the pope.
I’m told there has been more movement on that front in recent days. Donald Trump, notably, has yet to pick up the phone to call the first U.S.-born pontiff. Somebody should book a pair of seats for the two of them behind home plate and let the cameras handle the rest.
There is a reason the fifth-inning handshake landed the way it did. This was the sign of peace, the rite Catholics exchange at Mass just before communion, when everyone turns to a neighbor with an open hand, lifted out of the liturgy and placed within the context of a Major League Baseball game.
At Mass, the gesture usually goes to the people you came with; offering it to a stranger takes half a second of courage every single time. Last night, the gesture filled a ballpark in a country that has spent the past year being taught to treat strangers as threats.
Nobody at Rate Field solved anything. For about a minute, though, 40,000 Americans practiced the first thing Leo asked of the world — and they liked how it felt enough to post about it on social media.
The pope’s first sentence keeps demonstrating its long shelf life, from the loggia in St. Peter’s to the fifth inning on the South Side, and I suspect it would work on your block too.
At Letters from Leo, we stand with everyone who watched those clips last night and wanted more of whatever that was. An unarmed and disarming peace, humble and persevering, is the whole program of this Leo XIV’s pontificate, and this community exists to follow it across the nation — even, occasionally, into baseball games.
This is the fastest-growing Catholic community in the country because people are hungry for something better than the politics of contempt. On Tuesday night, they found a taste of it in America’s pastime.
If this essay gave you what those clips gave me, share it with those who need proof that public joy is still possible. And if you believe this movement matters, join us.
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Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.
I hope I remember this story tomorrow. I always go to mass and Bible study on Thursdays. A guy I know is a huge White Sox fan. I think this was an awesome thing for the White Sox to do.
Darn— they mitre won!