The Pope's neighborhood was ethnically cleansed by criminal violence

The important facts are often found at the end of New York Times articles.

The abandoned, graffiti-splattered St. Mary of the Assumption church on the far south side of Chicago where Pope Leo XIV was an altar boy

“White flight” is the pejorative used to dismiss the lived experience of the many millions of white Americans whose neighborhood flipped from white to black in the second half of the 20th Century, such as Pope Leo XIV’s hometown of Dolton, IL, just across the city line from Chicago. The implication is that hallucinatory stereotypes about black crime and disorder in the schools caused bigoted whites to pointlessly flee geographically convenient urban locations for the soulless suburbs.

White flight is not to be confused with “gentrification” which means predatory whites moving into urban neighborhoods that have been the rightful homelands of blacks since the mind of man runneth not to the contrary (or back to 1977, the details don’t matter).

On the other hand, the New York Times likes the new Pope for being pro-immigration, so they don’t want to demean what happened to his community by calling it white flight. Of course, the alternative term of “ethnic cleansing” would never come to mind.

And, as I’ve often pointed out, New York Times reporters generally are pretty good at their job and like including important facts in their articles, even if they might upset subscribers. But the marketing department knows that the NYT’s 11-million paying subscribers tend to value highly having their pre-existing worldviews about who are the Good Guys and who are the Bad Guys affirmed. So, marketing and the newsroom has worked out a modus vivendi where the reporters keep subversive facts out of the opening paragraphs of their articles, but are also allowed to slip them in toward the end after most subscribers have been pleasingly bored and moved on to another article.

I will excise parts of the article but number the paragraphs in the original NYT story:

Pope’s Childhood in a Changing Chicago Tells a Story of Catholic America

The pope grew up in a Catholic enclave on Chicago’s South Side. That community is gone now.

By Ruth Graham and Julie Bosman

Reporting from Chicago

May 10, 2025

[1] Before he was Pope Leo XIV, or even Father Bob, he was the youngest of the three Prevost boys in the pews at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish on the far edge of Chicago’s southern border….

[4] Today, the old Catholic enclave on the South Side of Chicago has essentially disappeared, with institutions shuttered and parishioners dispersing into the suburbs. … The old St. Mary building has fallen into disrepair, with graffiti scrawled behind the altar.

[5] That transformation is in many ways the story of Catholicism in America, as changes in urban and suburban landscapes crashed into demographic and cultural shifts that radically reshaped many Catholic communities.

[6] “It’s one of the great dramas of 20th century U.S. history,” said John McGreevy, a historian at the University of Notre Dame and the author of “Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter With Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North.”

But, one that is oddly hushed up.

[7] Because Catholic dioceses invested so heavily in their physical infrastructure, including church buildings and schools, white Catholics often stayed longer in their neighborhoods than white residents who fled when Black people began to move in the mid-20th century.

[8] “Catholic parishes were neighborhood anchors in ways that no white Protestant or white Jewish institution was,” Dr. McGreevy said. “When Catholics of a certain generation were asked, ‘Where are you from?’ They would say, ‘I’m from St. Barnabas,’ ‘I’m from Holy Name.’”

[9] Even in many changing Catholic neighborhoods, white residents eventually moved out. …

[15] Chicago’s South Side was solidly working class during Pope Leo’s childhood, said Rob Paral, a researcher at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago. The family attended a South Side church, but they lived in Dolton, a suburb just past the city line.

Dolton is 22 miles south of the Loop:

Dolton has recently been in the news for having America’ Most Hilarious Mayor, Tiffany Henyard, but her name doesn’t come up in this article.

[18] … Donna Sagna, 50, has lived next door to the pope’s childhood home for about eight years, she said, during a period that has sometimes been troubled for the block.

[19] She said she had seen drugs being sold near the pope’s former house. People moved frequently, Ms. Sagna said, often to escape the violence and crime in the neighborhood. She said she knew of no one who still lived on the block since the Prevost family days.

[20] The neighborhood has felt calmer in recent years, she said, and she is thrilled to be living next door to a house with a suddenly notable history.

Homicides in Chicago are so far this year down 40% compared to 2021 at the peak of the George Floyd Racial Reckoning.

[21] “I’m hoping this will bring some peace to the community,” Ms. Sagna said.

Finally, in Paragraph 27, the NYT gets to the essence of the event:

… [27] In Dolton, 94 percent of residents were white and 2 percent were Black in 1980. By the 2010 census, 5 percent of Dolton residents were white and 90 percent were Black.

From Wikipedia:

[28] Pope Leo’s mother died in 1990. His father, Louis, sold the family home in Dolton in 1996 after almost 50 years, according to county records. He died the next year.

[29] The pope’s childhood home, a modest brick house on a well-kept block in Dolton, sold last year for $66,000, according to property records. It was recently refurbished and listed again for $199,000. (This week, the real estate broker managing the sale pulled it off the market to consider raising the price.)

[30] Marie Nowling, 86, who lives four houses away, described the neighborhood as quiet. She moved into her house in 1999.

[31] “When I moved here it was wild, a lot of gangs,” Ms. Nowling said. “But it’s a quiet, nice neighborhood now.”