Unless you have been hiding under a rock, I’m sure you have already heard the news about the newly elected pope of the Catholic Church being from Chicago (technically, the Chicago area). There was a lot of excitement in town and on the Internet when the news broke; I know I enjoyed the hundreds of memes made to celebrate the occasion.

In response to the news, there appeared to be a sense that this was the first time Chicago had made history for its connection to the Catholic Church. That assumption is false. It’s fair to say that Chicago and Catholicism have been making history together since Chicago became a thing. Since I’m everyone’s favorite Chicago urban historian, I am duty bound to share some of that history with you, the fantastic folks who indulge in the Reader .

Did you know that Chicago played a significant role in the life of the first American Catholic saint? Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini (for whom the Chicago Housing Authority’s Cabrini row houses were named) was an Italian-born nun who migrated to the U.S. in the 1880s and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1909. She established 67 institutions (schools, hospitals, and orphanages) throughout her career, and traveled globally for the Church. She founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Pope Leo XIII encouraged her to open convents in several U.S. cities, Chicago being one of them. Saint Cabrini died in Chicago’s Columbus Hospital on December 22, 1917, and some of her remains are preserved at the National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini , built on the site of the old hospital and reopened to the public in 2012 after a renovation.

Beyond the first U.S.-born pope and the first U.S. saint, Chicago was home to the first recognized Black Catholic priest in the U.S., John Augustus Tolton. It should be noted that James Healy, a Black man born into slavery in Georgia in 1830, was ordained before Father Tolton. However, Healy was ordained while passing as a white man (as he and his siblings’ mixed race origins were not made public until the 1950s).

Tolton was born in Missouri in 1854 and raised in downstate Quincy. He was known for his graceful sermons and his singing voice. After being ordained in 1886, he eventually was assigned to the Archdiocese of Chicago, where he would go on to lead the largest Black American parish in the country at Bronzeville’s Saint Monica Roman Catholic Church . Tolton established Saint Monica’s parish through his will and financial support from Chicago philanthropists. St. Monica is now Our Lady of Africa Parish .

So, the first U.S.-born pope, first U.S. saint, first recognized Black priest . . . all Chicago. Even our city’s name has a connection to the Church. In 1673, a French Jesuit priest by the name of Jacques Marquette and his homie, Canadian explorer and fur trader Louis Jolliet, became the first white men on record to see what would eventually become the “second city.” The story goes that members of the Indigenous Miami tribe assisted the French and Canadian fellas on their journey, showing them through a portage between rivers. Marquette and Jolliet recorded that the Miami called the area Chécagou, which might have been their interpretation of the Miami word “ shikaakwa ,” a term that refers to the wild leeks and flora that gave the swampland its odor. We’ve been the city of “smelly onions” ever since.

Did you know that a Catholic priest invented the bulletproof vest in our city? Born in Poland, Casimir Zeglen came to the U.S. in 1890. He moved to Chicago, where he served as the pastor of Saint Stanislaus Kostka, then the largest Polish church in the country. In 1893, during the tail end of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago mayor Carter Harrison III was assassinated at his home. The killer, Patrick Eugene Prendergast, had shot him in the chest. Following this event, Zeglen went to work on a bulletproof vest, which he made using silk. His understanding of the resistive properties of silk would go on to save lives, including that of King Alfonso XIII of Spain .

There’s also a Catholic connection to the guy we named DuSable Lake Shore Drive after. Chicago’s first non-native permanent settler, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, had ties to the Catholic Church. As a darker-complexioned man from Haiti, when he arrived in the French territory of Louisiana in or around 1770, it is said that he was mistakenly seen as an enslaved American. He had to take refuge inside a Jesuit mission. It is also believed that the Church helped him acquire the “freedom papers” needed to travel up the Mississippi River, which he would eventually do and land in Peoria. There, he married a woman of Potawatomi descent, and together they would settle in Chicago, becoming our first permanent settlers.

Chicago has been at the forefront of religious thought in the U.S. since the city’s inception. The Moorish Science Temple of America, the Nation of Islam, and even the Hebrew Israelites all have roots here. Adding to what I always say, “Everything dope about America (including the pope) comes from Chicago—the greatest city on earth.”