I remember as a young boy in downstate Illinois watching The Chicago Cardinals play their NFL games with Red Grange describing the action from the broadcast booth.

Finally, after all this time, we have a Chicago Cardinal as the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Chicago Cardinals later moved to St. Louis and became the St. Louis (Football) Cardinals.

It turns out that the new Pope did the same thing.  The football team lasted longer in St. Louis than he did. Today, they’re in Arizona. The man known to friends in St. Louis as Bob Prevost has moved to Vatican City, the world’s smallest nation.

We watched his speech, given in—I think—at least three languages, none of them English. Or French, of which I have a certain familiarity since I passed three of four semesters of it.

I was reminded of a story I once heard about professional baseball players who went out to battle areas during World War II to entertain the troops. We’re most familiar with stories of entertainers who did USO shows, but baseball players who were ineligible for the draft volunteered to cheer up the troops and would go out, about four at a time, and visit areas that were (mostly) recently cleared of the enemy.

One such troupe was made up of former Gashouse Gang shortstop Leo Durocher, then the manager of the Dodgers, Nick Etten who led the American League in 1944 in home runs and walks as a first baseman with the Yankees, New York sportswriter Tom Meany, and Joe “Ducky” Medwick, also a former Gashouse Gang guy but who was by then a member of the New York Giants.

They did at least four shows a day in Italy at a time when the Allies were taking the country town by town. Meany would be the emcee. A 22-minute film of the 1944 World Series (St. Louis vs. St. Louis with all six games in Sportsman’s Park) and then the three players would talk. There would be a true-false quiz show with the winners getting autographed baseballs, and then the guys would stick around for autographs and talks with the soldiers.

Eventually their tour took them to Rome where Medwick and Durocher got to meet Pope Pius XII. Durocher asked the Pope to bless his rosary, which he did. And then the Pope turned to Medwick and asked him about his background.  And Medwick supposedly answered:

“Your Holiness, I’m Joseph Medwick. I, too, used to be a Cardinal.”

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Three members of the 133-member Conclave also have ties to the St. Louis area. Wilson Gregory of Washington D. C. was the Archbishop of Belleville Illinois, and in 2020 became the first African-American Cardinal in 2020. Raymond Burke was the Archbishop in St. Louis, 2004-08 and became a Cardinal in 2010. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who became a Cardinal in 2012 was the Auxiliary Bishop in St. Louis 2001-02.

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In 1977, fresh Villanova University graduate Robert Prevost (the picture is from the 1977 college yearbook) joined the Augustinian order and went to the Compton Heights neighborhood of St. Louis and became took his first step in the priesthood as a novice at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church. He took his first vows a year later and four years after that, he took his final vows.

The Post-Dispatch interviewed St. Louis Zoo employee Steve Baker, a friend from those early days. “Never in my life did I think that someone that I knew was going to be the pope,” he told the PD. “I mean, I sat at a kitchen table and drank coffee with this man…This guy was a rock star. You cold tell even then he was destined to be great.”

Now, however, comes a critical question: Can the new Pope, a Chicago native, be a Cubs fan?

Breath a sigh of relief St. Louis Cardinals fans.  He’s a White Sox guy.

Whew!

The mental image of Pope Leo XIV leading the crowd in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” at Wrigley Field would have been impossible to take.

(If you want a much better telling of the Medwick and the Pope story, go to Ducky and The Lip in Italy – Society for American Baseball Research)